Ties That Bind
by Gutter Dreams
Summary: Covenants aren't the only things that weave worlds together, but a journey through pacts could do one some good. [A Dark Souls II story]
1. Chapter 1

There is a hell deep within the gaping pit of Majula where sin is the master of all domain. Deep within that despicable maw, there is nothing but squalid existence. Grotesque creatures spawned from the vilest flames feast on the flesh of their own brethren. Mold licks at the stone walls; parasites infest the pools of water and sicken the already ill, leaving a trail of afflicted. Those who survive learn to adapt, paying the price of their souls being forever deformed by the vermin-infested realm. Marred are the exiled creations that dwell here, forsaken from the warmth of the sun.

Pharros the Vagabond, a legend of a man, once, long ago, lingered in this filth, in his honorable attempt to craft inventions and traps, the likes of which could baffle the human mind. His obsession with deceptive mechanisms drove him to seek out the farthest regions of Drangleic. It is not a surprise that the remains of his art continue to hold strong against distorted time, resisting to crumble as all structures inevitably do. Nobody truly knows what became of the man, but perhaps a faint smile would grace the old legend's lips to know that his contraptions are still put to well use in this tepid pit. And perhaps that smile would turn sour with disdain if he knew what exactly they are being manipulated for.

Perpetually existing, the King of the circus hunkers low in his refuge, sickened with disease and sick of humanity. His once warm ponders of happy co-existence have long since ran bitter and cold. Or so he tells me.

Where warriors fight through to test their mettle and further their prowess, a soul lingers as that infamous Vagabond once did. A soul taking use of the wicked contraptions for a certain King's pleasure.

I found him alone in a cold, dank room on a pile of human and rat bones and could not turn away when he gazed up at my face and told me I was filth. Instead, I shoved one of his kind's tails onto his restless front feet. His reaction, which was nearly the opposite of upset, surprised me; everything about him surprised me, I'll admit, from the very beginning. Deep and noble was his voice, as well as his soul, housed in this puny, yet immaculate, vessel. I only label him immaculate because if his tortured, isolated soul resided in anything otherwise, the world would taste sour and wrong. Of course such a benevolent thing is stigmatized and held in repulsion. Once one has seen the dark of this world, it is easy to see the light.

"Wilt thou thy human soul surrender, and pledge thyself to me?" he bid of me within seconds of regarding me as filth. "Swearest thou by the sweet-tempered sludge that laps at our bosoms?"

When I hummed stupidly in an act of being indecisive, his entire form quivered, betraying his intent. He was desperate. He was lonely and desperate. Well, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the tragically oppressed.

Blood marks the path I took to gaining his favor. With a poisoned weapon, the remnants of Pharros' genius, and the element of surprise as my mounts, I held the Grave of Saints under my control for a long, long while. Under my control they remain still as I enter my King's chamber, my body winding down from the recent purging of a trespasser.

I take a seat in front of him on the cold, hard ground, and he scrutinizes my face with eyes full of sleep from up on that terrible heap of bones. My hair is beginning to get so unkempt and long that the ends of it are trapped under my bottom as I sit, collecting some dirt and grime from the floor. I care not.

"How was your nap?" I tease the Rat King with a knowing smile. My words are less to tease and more to fill the troubling silence in the room, and we both know this. He does not respond in as playful a manner as I was hoping he would.

"What art thou name, servant of mine?" This is a sudden question, swift and to the point. His voice is quiet and serious. "If thou hast one."

I am quiet and serious in response. "Synthia."

The silence that follows makes me antsy and nervous. He's never asked me much about myself before, so why now? I ring my hands and tug at strands of dark hair that are trapped under me.

When he speaks, he looks into my eyes and is the most solemn I've ever heard him. Solemn and sad. "Synthia, thou art not meant for this life thou seeketh here in the burrows."

This unexpected statement surprises me. I study his face as I respond in a neutral tone. "What do you mean?"

He seems contemplative as if he is focusing on nothing but what is within the expanse of his mind. I feel like I should leave him and give him room to think, but I don't move an inch. I sit and watch the twitching muscles in his feet. We sit in silence for so long that when he starts speaking again, it startles me.

"Thou art not..." his voice trails off. Were it anyone else, my patience would have long since worn to a thin sliver, but never with him. The most I do is idly pick at the dried blood on my curved sword.

Eventually, he sums up his thoughts. "Nevermind it."

I blink and look up at him. "Nevermind it? Nevermind what? What are you.." When I reach to touch the side of his face, he evades me.

He shakes his head and bits of dirt scatter into the air. "Thou must take leave of me now. I must think."

I hesitate but finally stand, and I turn as smoothly as I can to leave the room without stumbling. That whole encounter bothered me. It was odd and awkward and left a bad taste in my mouth as if I'd been sipping at the water the rats walk in. Something has been off here for some time. The rats step around me like I'm made of poison, and it seems now this attitude is infecting the King. Perhaps humans and rats really can't live and die together in peace.

Almost like it knew I was thinking about their kind, one of the rats is waiting outside for me, twitching violently and gnawing on its own tail. When it notices my presence, it crawls in my direction, tail in mouth the whole while. I nearly smile at the poor thing. I'm disappointed in myself that after all the horrid things I've seen them do and the way they regard humans, I still cannot shake the affection I feel. Perhaps thus is a curse of being female and unwillingly possessing maternal instincts.

I squat and speak in a soft tone for it. "Hello there." When it chatters madly at me, I reach into the front pocket of my satchel and slip on the Ring of Whispers. I forget that not all of these miserable creatures are as intelligent as their King.

"-no no no it cannot be, itcannotbe..." He's mumbling to himself in a low voice, so quickly I can barely understand. I lay a comforting hand behind his dirty ear, and he squeaks and jumps, startling the both of us. His large upper teeth nip at his lower lip in his panic, and he starts bleeding. Now I feel bad. I can feel the grime and filth on his hair depositing onto my hand when I wipe at his sore flesh.

"My dear..."

"You must go, you must. He say. It cannot be. He say. This is not a place for you. He hate you."

I pull my hand safely away from his wild teeth and lower my voice. "Were you listening to our conversation, little one?"

"No no nononono. Yes yes. He tell me before. In the time before, yes yes."

The anxiety that had begun to gnaw at me formerly returns with renewed strength. Slipping my hands under his stomach, I pick him up and carry him further away from the King's chamber for a bit of privacy. He's like a worm in my arms, quaking and chattering away. "Yes yes he hate you yes leave leave."

His foul breath assaults me. When I let him slip from my arms onto the stone, he lands with a soft pitter-patter of his feet and shoves his tail into his mouth again. I grab the slimy thing myself and pull it away. "What do you mean? What are you speaking of?"

"He tell me, he TELL me. He say... You leave yes. I don't- he don't want you here. Yes yes."

I snag his soppy ears and force him to look at me. His eyes are a deep, dark red, bulging and swollen. He is made in the image of his King, and it pains me to look at him.

"He told you this? That he wants me here no longer?" I keep my voice stern and firm to force the answer from him.

"YES yes yes. He say! He say... We don't need you, he don't need you. Yes yes yes. You leave, you leave now. You are problem, you are problem for him. Always been, he say."

His ears escape from my hands when I stand up straight and regard the stone walls with a dull feeling of rejection. The open-mouthed faces of Pharros' work are staring into our souls with their eerie expressions. I've never found them frightening until now. It all makes sense. This is what he was awkwardly failing to say to my face. I'm a problem for him; I'm too clingy, too eager. I've been here for _so_ long. I visit him everyday, desperate for.. For what? For something. I cannot bear to think it. I disgust myself. The judgmental faces of Pharros seem to agree.

"Yes..." I mumble, in a daze. The rat at my feet is quiet for once; quiet and still. His tail hangs limp in his mouth. "What else did he tell you?" I look down into the innocent face of the rat and compose myself. "What else did he tell you about me?"

He wanders close and sits upon my boots, looking up at me. His little paws clutch at the black leather of my pants. "He say. You no good. No. No good for a protect. He say other humans do better. He say he don't want you. Faking to be rat. You are not rat. You must go, yes, yes. You want to be rat, you want to be here, you cannot. No, no, no."

I furrow my brow. "Other humans? Does he mean other covenant members?"

He twitches his way through his response, struggling with the foreign words. "Other cov- covie.. Yes, yes, other. Other good, you are bad."

Something is amiss here. Fittingly, I smell a rat."My dear," I say in a honey-sweet tone, bending over and taking his front paws into my hands. "Did he say this, or did you?"

The rat nibbles on my fingers like he wants to be rid of me. "I... He tell. I just say what he tell. I just say-" He sounds overwhelmed. He's whimpering now and more than just nibbling at my hands. He nearly breaks my skin as he hisses out frantically, "Don't hurt me!"

I've heard enough. I drop his paws and step around his shaking body, on my way to the bonfire. I can hear his jagged teeth chattering behind me as I walk away.

"It not just me! Others! Rats! We don't need you! You bad, we don't need you, steal our King! Go! Go, bad human, go!"

I tuck the Ring of Whispers deep into its respective pocket. The bonfires bright flames heal my aching chest and carry my soul far, far away from that wretched, miserable place.


	2. Chapter 2

I fancy that nowhere in this dark, cold land is there any place quite as lamentable and disheartening as the valley. The rock here is scarred and bare, a stripped body picked over by drained miners and covetous scavengers. Poisonous fumes flit through the air like demon wisps, clogging my throat and lungs as I stand on a precipice gazing at the decrepit, falling carcass of a once towering windmill.

It's been a long, long while since I first crawled out of that stinking pit in Majula. The sunlight nearly stole my eyesight, for I'd spent so much distorted time there with those who were poisoned by the dark. To slay the rat fur that clings to my flesh, I took it upon myself to seek out the very thing they abhor. The memories of his deep, noble voice are first on the chopping block.

These mines sicken me; infinitely more so than the squalid Grave of Saints. It's not the morbidity that numerous Undead were forced laborers here, under the iron hand of the Iron King, or the physical sick that floats through the air and hovers in pools on the ground. No, it's more of the overall silence of the place. It's more of seeing the marks of a once bustling area, forced or not, and having nothing but its deteriorated remnants to give it any meaning. I suppose many places in Drangleic are in similar states, and it's just a matter of time before I run across them as well.

I'm certainly not lingering for long in this terrible area. Only from a hasty visit to Majula did I learn where to find the Heirs of the Sunlight. A lovely woman in green informed me, whose kindness made the unpleasant visit a tad bit less unpleasant. Though, there was this frightening Undead man with her, standing beside her and commanding the area with his tall frame, peculiarly covered in mismatched pieces of armor. He was deathly silent, and his eyes locked on to my every movement with alarming accuracy. I could not leave that horrid place fast enough.

From one hell to another, it seems. I linger on the edge of the rock and absorb the natural beauty in decay for a few, precious moments longer before I force my feet to carry me away. I just about sprint through the entire place holding my breath, littered with poisonous air as it is and hollowed workers. Finally, when I am nearly exhausted, with squinting eyes I can see a familiar glow in the distance that cries of hope. 'This must be it,' I think to myself. 'This is the place where sunlight shines.' I quickly and blindly round the corner, dash through the poisonous mist, and find myself at a bonfire; the same bonfire I had rested at before I began my journey. I hadn't even noticed I was sprinting around in circles like a trapped rat.

"Gods..." I moan in despair, collapsing against the wall and letting my tired body sink down to the ground. Perhaps coming here was a mistake. Perhaps I should have long since dragged myself back to the King and begged for forgiveness. I scoot close to the bonfire and take great solace in the warmth it gives me; an encompassing warmth, which stretches its tiny, healing fingers into the very marrow of my bones. I lean my weight to one side, with the intent of childishly curling up into an inactive ball by the flames, but a figure suddenly rushes into the cavern. My heart leaps and I right myself, gripping my sword, but freezing otherwise.

It's a man, I observe, in full silver armor and helmet, with a greatsword held in two hands. Another man soon rushes in as well, a much smaller man in lighter armor, and they both regard me briefly before kneeling in front of the bonfire to regather their strength. I scoot away to give them space, my heart racing. I am fatally self-conscious now, cautious of my every move because I feel like I'm viewing myself from their eyes. I wonder how horrible I look: some wretch with dirty, long hair in beaten-up black leather armor. Down in the depths it's easy to forget that life continues on through the despair of Drangleic, especially so when it comes to adventurers and travelers. It never occurred to me that I would ever have to share a bonfire with someone, let alone two other people.

They're sitting down now, adjacent to me, and it's tremendously quiet and awkward. I'm oddly panicking, which I find rather pathetic, but I can't help it. When one has spent so much time wallowing with rats and fighting alone, social skills can take a turn for the worse, to say the least. I'm finding that out right now by my sweaty palms.

I look up as discreetly as possible and take in their appearances. The taller man has removed his silver helm, and I'm surprised at what lies underneath. He is older, visibly so, with gray hair encroaching from his temples and scattering in his beard, but if that greatsword set beside him is any testimony, he is still able to hold himself well in a fight. The other man is much younger looking, about as young as I am, if not younger, and he has disheveled light brown hair and a particularly handsome face. His eyes dart over in my direction, and I glance away to look into the flames again.

For a while, only their heavy breathing and the crackling fire can be heard. A thought has struck me, but I'm incredibly hesitant to act out on it. I mean to ask for their help in finding the Altar of Sunlight, but the weight of how to start such a request is stuck in my throat. When the older man sighs and begins to stand, it forcefully dislodges my indecision.

"Hello," I start awkwardly, and they both turn to look at me. "I was wondering something. If you could help me, that is. To find some place." It's stilted and jagged, but it gets the job done. I have their attention now, and the older man is sinking back down to sit.

The younger man is immediately regarding me with distrust. I can see it in the way he squints his eyes at me and restlessly thumbs at the hilt of his sword. The elder is far more welcoming.

"Hm?" he inquires eagerly, almost suspiciously so, "how may we assist you, my lady?"

His chivalry is surprising. It is certainly something to be revered in this harsh, cold world. His younger companion elbows him before leaning over and whispering something in his ear. His eyes stay fixed on me the entire time, like a hawk eyeing a mouse. It seems they're having a conversation between themselves now, so I clear my throat to get their attention again.

"I was wondering where I could find the Altar of Sunlight," I venture. When their faces turn towards me, it's startling how different their expressions are. The older man seems taken by joy, and the younger is giving me a vile glare. I feel silly now for thinking myself odd earlier, for it seems that oddness is not an uncommon thing up here on the surface.

The older man is smiling so truly that there is a deep crinkle at the corners of his eyes. "Do you wish to join the Heirs of the Sunlight?" he asks, leaning towards me. When I nod, he gives a few triumphant laughs.

His partner looks mortified. "Stop it," he hisses to the old man, "look at 'er. Looks like a common thief, she does. I know them types, you can just look at 'em and tell." His accent is as thick as the stone that surrounds us, made doubly apparent by how he's hissing his words out like venom, brimming with anger and ill intent. I also greatly enjoy the fact that he's speaking of me as if I'm not sitting less than five feet from him.

"Hush now, Seamus," the older man chides. "Do not judge by appearance."

"Maybe you should," the younger meets my eyes and starts directing his anger towards me. "She's nothin' but a filthy rat. That's right, I saw the ring on your finger."

Surprise hits me like a thrown rock. I look down at the hands that are resting in my lap and sure enough, there it is, glistening like a beacon. The Crest of the Rat remains on my right index finger.

"You are perceptive," I murmur. It's more of an observation than a compliment. He flashes me a wicked sneer in response.

The older man's smile has died away considerably. "Is this true? Is it true you are in affiliation with the rats?"

He sounds so disappointed when he asks me. I finally understand now what my King tried so vehemently to inform me of. There is indeed a stigma against rats from the humans; it is palpable to me now. It's not just the King's old view of things clouding his judgment, or a harboring of prejudices against humans. The weary look the old knight is giving me right now says it all. He thinks that the simple act of wearing this ring or possibly having been in the Rat's Covenant makes me an object worthy of despising. I feel sick to my stomach of humanity.

I don't bother putting my distaste into my words. "No. I am not in affiliation with the rats. I have told you I seek to join the Heirs of Sunlight."

His eyes narrow. "Then why do you wear that ring?"

Before I can answer, the younger man interrupts. "It's obvious why! She's either a rat, or she took it off some poor dead man." I want to cut his tongue out.

I stand and face the exit, fed up with speaking to these demons. "I will find it myself," I tell them, and begin to leave the small refuge.

"Halt!" When I turn to look, the older man is on his feet, his helmet tucked under one arm and his greatsword grasped in his other hand. "Regardless of covenant, it is dangerous, my lady. Allow me to escort you."

What a proper knight he is. It makes me uncomfortable.

"...Thank you." I decide to accept his help because I'm not blind to when I need assistance. I just pray this encounter passes quickly.

The younger rises to his feet as well, looking repulsed, but with the intention of following us. I wonder what their manner of relationship is that makes his need to accompany outweigh his vicious abhorrence of me.

"I am Gregory, of Mirrah. We both are Warriors of the Sun," the old knight pulls me from my thoughts, looking at me expectantly after he speaks.

I indulge him. "I am called Synthia," I reply quietly. The young demon shoulders past me on his way out.

"That is Seamus," Gregory tells me, leaning in close like we're sharing some secret. "Don't mind him." With that, he turns from where we had paused at the mouth of the cave and follows Seamus out.

"Shame-us..." I whisper to myself as I step through the mist, tasting the word on my tongue. I've never heard such a name in my life.

"What are you whisperin' over there, you thief?" he snaps at me, but I step past him as if he's nothing more than a passing shade. I had never had the misfortune of meeting someone whose physical appearance differs so dramatically from who they appear to be on the inside. It's worrying and clings to my mind.

We take off like a team of trained warriors, Gregory, leading at the head, Seamus, trailing at the back and I, in the middle. The old knight, Gregory, attempts to engage me in conversation as we trudge through the valley, but my one word responses and hums finally deter him. I want to hammer into his skull that I have no intention of becoming close to either of them, not after they carelessly insulted both me and my King.

He escorts me to the Altar well enough. It is a sad sight to behold. It lies in a cave, deep in the dusty mines, vacant and eerie. I had heard tales of times when Sun Warriors were not so far and few in between, and the worship of the Sun was a common and encouraged practice. Images of the Sun were carved, painted and embroidered throughout the fantasy kingdom that is said to have thrived long ago.

There is not a soul to be found here. The sun-bathed, crumbled statue surely embodies more than some would care to admit. All great things must fade eventually, so the saying goes.

"We will give you some privacy," Gregory tells me, taking Seamus by the elbow and dragging him out along the way. I appreciate that he does this. There is a certain deep intimacy when joining a covenant, like you're baring your soul.

I approach the patch of sunlight that filters into the cave through a hole in the ceiling and ascend the stairs in front of the broken statue. My chest is starting to ache. The realization has hit me that I will be fully abandoning my previous arrangement for another, and it makes me falter. I want to turn and run back to my sanctuary and stay there for as long as I possibly can. I fiddle with the Crest of the Rat as I kneel before the statue. Steeling my nerves, I press my palms together and close my eyes, beckoning to the Sun. It responds strongly and, before long, I can feel a force tug at my soul. It needs my acceptance to continue and fully envelop me, lingering as I unwillingly reminisce of when I accepted the Rat King into a pact. His grip on my soul was dark and firm, nothing like the light warmth that fills me now. I let the warmth take me as I accept the Sun into my soul. When I open my eyes and part my hands, there is a ring waiting in them: a ring bearing the symbol of the Sun. I silently remove the Crest of the Rat and slip this new ring onto my right index finger.

Turning over from my kneeling position, I sit on the mossy steps and reflect on my decisions. I am disappointed in how weak I am, how indecisive. If I hope to grow stronger, there must be no regrets. If I hope to rid myself of the stench of rats...

My musings are interrupted when a figure enters the cavern. It is Gregory. His vicious dog of a companion is no where to be seen. He steps up to me and I see him glance at my hands before he smiles. "Ah, another Warrior of the Sun... You made a good choice today, my lady."

I frown up at him. "Do not call me lady. I am no lady. I am just a swordswoman."

He shakes his head in dismissal. "You are a lady in my eyes."

It is surprisingly pleasant to admire his charming smile as he speaks. "Why do you align yourself with that horrible boor of a man?" I find myself asking.

His smile widens, if anything. "Ah, Seamus," he sighs, sounding both affectionate and disappointed. "He is a troubled boy. I worry about him..."

"Is he your son?" I ask, voicing my suspicions.

He appears taken aback. "Oh, no. He is simply a fellow Warrior of the Sun. A fellow brethren."

This man bewilders me. He is so kind, so gentlemanly. I tell him so, and he laughs.

"My lady, there is a legend of a man, a brave Warrior of the Sun, who lived long ago. He was said to have been the most courteous of his kind; denying benevolence to no one. It is this man that inspires me."

His tale is interesting. I have heard of no such man, but it gives me more encouragement to not regret the covenant I have chosen in place of the rat's. It takes the broken statue and renews it to a beautiful glory.

"That's very admirable," I mutter absent-mindedly, lost in my thoughts.

He takes a seat beside me on the steps and stares into my eyes. I hadn't noticed until now that his eyes are a bright green: burning like the light of the sun.

"Why did you come here, lady Synthia?"

His question catches me off guard. I ponder over whether I should tell the truth or not, but I look into his eyes and an honest response is pulled from me. "It is true I was once with the rats. But something... unexpected happened. So I left and decided to seek a new covenant. Hoping to get a fresh start, I suppose."

He nods with sympathy. "I see. Life can be very unexpected at times. We all have our demons." He is playing with a blue ribbon that is tied around the hilt of his greatsword.

"What are your demons?" I ask him, hesitantly, because I don't want to seem rude, but he just smiles and shakes his head.

"I wouldn't bother you with the dull tales of an old man's past."

We are both silent for a while until he audibly opens his mouth and closes it a second later. I look at him and incline my head, wishing him to continue, but he staring at the far wall.

"It can be dangerous out there," he says wistfully. "It _is_ dangerous. It is a dark and dangerous world. If you need somewhere to stay, if only for a while..." He turns his head to gaze at me with those bright, green eyes. "You could stay here."

* * *

What's that, you say? Synthia's not the chosen Undead, you say? Omg what a twist, you say! Oh. Wait, no. Those are all things that I say.


	3. Chapter 3

_I am alive... _

_Stars are blooming in golden ponds and twinkle on my silver fingertips as the sun rises, grossly incandescent. Its wondrous body shines in the same god-kissed starlight, like all the riches in the world, though the sky is inky black behind it all. When I throw myself recklessly into the wind, I find it fresh with the scent of wet rat's fur. Opening my arms wide, I gather all of the scent into my warm embrace and hold it tight, for safe keeping. It tickles my nose and seeps into my tear ducts, but the fluids of my body try to force it out. My King's tiny hands hold it in.  
_

_A strong gust sweeps me up, up into the darkness, throwing my arms open and stealing all of my scent! The stars are twinkling green now. "Hey..." they chirp to me in the voice of honeyed birds. "Come on." Oh, the warmth. It takes over my soul like a sickness. The sweetest thing... Rat tails are tangled in my red dress._

"Hey!"

A voice is rough and fed up. I stir and crack my eyes open with a tired exhale. The bonfire is waiting for me, ablaze with welcoming rejuvenation. I remember resting at the flames, with my arms crossed upon my knees, and I must have drifted off into a dream. My lazy muscles try to twist my body in a stretch, but something meets my hand along the way. It's soft to the touch and gives when I grab at it, so I turn my gaze to my hand and recognize that I'm grasping some kind of cloth.

"God..." I groan, pressing my face into my knee and removing my hand from Seamus' lower leg. I can hear him patting at the material and making a fuss of it, like I've infected him with my rat-diseases.

"Gregory said he wants to talk to you," is all I hear him mumble before he is gone.

I find Gregory at the Altar of Sunlight, where he usually is. It's been a short while since I joined this patchwork team of Sun Warriors. It would be more grounding to think of time in days, but that unit of measurement is long gone. Time is so abstract currently; it has decayed with the rest of Drangleic.

Gregory is sitting in the sunlight, illuminated and absorbing its warmth, nothing but welcoming smiles and optimism. The spots of gray in his hair shine like silver. I envy everything that he is.

He pats the stone ground beside him and bids me to sit, so I do, sweeping up my hair over my leg.

"Do you possess a white soapstone, lady Synthia?" he asks of me. What a strange question to be the first thing you say to somebody. Although, he is a strange man. I silently produce one I had found somewhere along my travels from my satchel and hold it out to him. Where I had obtained it, I remember not. It's difficult to keep track of the things I've scavenged in this vulture's paradise of a world.

His face lights up as bright as a bonfire when he sees it. "Excellent!"

He pushes himself to his feet and takes my hand in his, helping me rise. I suppose he means for me to test out my newly found covenant. Although I had assured him that I am a well-trained killer and that my time with the rats proves as much, he had me training for a while on the Undead in the area instead of encouraging me to co-operate. "Nothing like a little practice to warm the bones!" he had enthused. I am actually a bit reluctant to finally use my soapstone. There was a reason I excelled so greatly with the rats: I am significantly better at killing people than helping them.

"Excellent, excellent," Gregory is still talking excitedly. "Have you had any experience in co-operation before?" I shake my head, and his smile falls a bit but remains. "Hm. I see. I suppose it wouldn't be too much for you to help in the Forest of Fallen Giants. It's nice and simple there; nothing too overwhelming. Do you know of the place?"

It pains me that he's speaking of me like I'm a child who can't handle herself. What he doesn't know is that if he had had the misfortune of wandering into the Grave of Saints, I would have shot him full of poison arrows and watched him slowly die. He thinks me more innocent than I truly am, but a part of me strangely wants to prove him right; make him believe that I'm not as foully corrupted as I am and that there is still some good in the world. He has this effect on me, and I want to return the favor.

"Yes, I'm familiar with it," I mumble. I'm staring at the ground, lost in dazed thoughts.

"Seamus will be accompanying you, of course."

My eyes snap up. "What? Why?" I can't help but sound childishly rebellious. He is an abhorrent human being. I don't even know the man, and I can tell this much.

"Are you dense?" Seamus' voice practically scares the marrow from my bones. He is leaning on the far wall with his arms crossed, facing us. I had not even noticed him. How did he slither in here? Or was he here the whole time? His very presence makes my skin crawl with revulsion.

He apparently notices how alarmed I am, because the corners of his lips curl slightly. "Were you even listenin' to what he told you earlier, or are you dense? You don't know what you're doin'. You need someone like me to watch over you."

Ah. I assume this is Gregory's plan to assure that the least possible blood will be spilled. He thinks I will either kill my host or myself. "I understand," I say to him calmly. "Stop trying to insult me."

Seamus scoffs, looking annoyed, but I can tell he's having fun with himself. He's having fun at my expense. I make myself a promise that one day I will strip the flesh from his bones with my fingernails.

"Enough of this," Gregory sighs. He looks disappointed in the both of us, which pains me because it implies that he sees Seamus and I as on the same ground. He is such a kind soul; I desperately want to impress him. I gnaw at my lip anxiously and shift from foot to foot, eager to use my soapstone.

Gregory steps close to me and holds his hand out. "Here, take this."

He opens his hand and is cradling what appears to be a small crystallized stone glowing a faint white. It's a lifegem. A simple gift, but a gift nonetheless. I grasp it from his hand with a thankful nod.

"Seamus," he calls and takes steps in Seamus' direction, but the younger man lifts his hand dismissively. "I have enough."

Gregory smiles and nods, looking proud. "Well done. I wish the both of you luck."

The walk to the bonfire is an infinitely long and infinitely awkward one. We are both silent and sick of each other, both surely pondering why Gregory would be so cruel as to subject us to this abysmal fate.

"Hey, wait!" I hear Seamus order from behind me when I kneel at the bonfire. I don't wait.

I close my eyes, and when I open them, I am alone in the Cardinal Tower within the forest. The fire glistens beautifully on the stone walls.

It's always disorienting to travel by the flames of the bonfires. I've never heard an explanation of exactly how it works, but it feels disturbing, like my physical body is being lifted by un-felt hands and set down like a child in a different location. There is loss of self-control that comes with it.

Seamus' body soon materializes beside me. "Idiot," he grumbles, but I don't dignify him with a response. This operation is purely professional, not an outlet for silly bickering between us. Gregory made that perfectly clear. I fish the soapstone out of my satchel and lean over to write my name on the ground.

Seamus grabs my arm, shaking his head. "Ah, ah, ah, not so fast. We're goin' to the fog wall."

I pull my arm back from him, flustered that he had the nerve to touch me. "We're supposed to be helping people. If we start here, it ensures that we're helping for the longest-"

"No. Let me tell you how things are gonna work around here." He steps into my personal space and grabs my arm again, squeezing it tight this time. I am floored.

"You're hurting me," I tell him, looking him right in his dark eyes. I am not afraid of him, I never will be, and I want him to know this, but I can look at his face and tell he doesn't care. His handsome features are emotionless, and his pupils are large as the sun. He is drowning in the power he thinks he's asserting over me. This man is a natural-born killer.

"Listen, lil' girl. You're goin' to follow my lead. Got it?" A scowl is the only acknowledgment I afford him. "We're goin' to the fog wall. You want to know why? Because that's where all the action is. I'm not baby-sittin' some pissant weakling through this entire damned forest."

With that said, he snatches my soapstone with his other hand and pushes me back. "Follow me. Try not to trip yourself with your own hair."

Rage is burning within me, white-hot and consuming, but I picture Gregory's disappointed face and it drives me to smother my feelings. I follow him obediently down the ladder in the room, down the lift in the next, and all the way to the fog wall. He specifically tosses my soapstone at me when I'm not looking so it hits me in the chest and falls to the ground, leaving a golden smudge on the rock. Bastard.

I silently wipe away the smudge with the back of my hand and scrawl my name on the ground beside Seamus' messily written one. Their golden glows dazzle me.

"Don't get in my way," I hear him warn as his body fades before my eyes.

I wait a while by myself, staring at my signature and nervously suspecting that I won't be summoned, but my nerves are calmed when I feel myself being whisked away. It's similar to the mystical power of the bonfires, but different. It's much more intimate crossing over to another's world.

As soon as my feet hit the ground, the warmth that invaded me when I first made a pact with the Sun seeps into every one of my muscles, and I lift my arms to the sky, stretching my body and going up on my tiptoes in an effort to be closer to the Sun. This feeling fades soon enough and I relax, lowering my stance, though I'm still jarred by my actions. It was almost as if I had no control over my body.

Luckily, we got summoned to the same world. Seamus and a strange, heavily armored man are standing across from me, watching attentively. Seamus' slim body is enveloped in a deep golden glow; he shines like the light of the Sun. I overlook the smirk he gives me when he catches me staring and look at our host. He is waving enthusiastically at me, and so I wave back. I'd heard stories about summoning phantoms and the like, and how verbal communication is nonexistent in this state of transporting to another realm, but to experience it is another thing entirely. I cannot make a sound; it's as if there is cotton stuffed in my chest and throat, and I could not hope to speak around it.

When the host turns and presses his hand against the fog wall, I attempt to steel my nerves, but I'm oddly panicking. This is much too different from hiding in the shadows and springing traps on my prey; I'm out in the open, exposed and judged. I have something to protect along with my own life and, if I fail, Gregory will know. Seamus will know. The host will know. My hand is shaking when I press it against the fog after the host has passed through, and Seamus notices. His eyes open wide with a shared sense of fear and he slaps me hard on the back, right between my shoulder blades, perhaps with the belief that it will ground me, but it sends me into a deeper realm of disquiet. He's here, and I'm here, and his life is in my hands. My life is in _his_ hands. My heart is racing, I can feel it all over my body, I can't breathe, I can't move my legs, there's no air in here, I can't breathe!

Something is rushing at my face and hits me hard in the side, sending me rocketing through the air. A hard solid hits my other side, and I think it's a wall, but soon I'm laying still on the ground, and I don't want to open my eyes. It's so loud in here! My trembling hands reach for my Estus flask, but I can't open my mouth to drink the liquids, and the flask falls from my useless hands and onto the ground. The lifegem! It's so slippery, so small... The smooth rock falls to the ground before I can crush it. I can't even scream when something slams right down on my body, crushing my life as pain steals over my soul.

000000000

Breath comes to me in short gasps. I slowly open my eyes and the stone ceiling of the Cardinal Tower is staring down at me. There is something weighing down my chest, but I don't concern myself with it now. Instead, I turn my face towards the warm, healing glow of the bonfire, which lulls my racing heartbeat, though my limbs still ache with dull fatigue.

Awareness is flooding me, allowing me to fully absorb my surroundings. I'm laying on my back, and Seamus is sitting close, with his hand on my chest, but he pulls it back like he's touched acid when our eyes meet.

"You were horrible," is what I hear him quietly say to me, and I don't know why I expected anything different to come out of his depraved mouth.

Memories come dripping into my mind - the wall, the floor, the pain, my...- and my panic is renewed. "My Estus...!" I start sitting up, hectically determined to pass through the fog wall again and face the terrible Giant myself to get it back, but he puts one hand on my shoulder and shows me an Estus flask grasped in his other.

"I got it," he reassures. "You owe me an awful lot." I run my eyes over it before I lay back down and throw my arm over my face in shame. "By the gods, you were horrible."

I shake my head under my arm. I'm smiling, but he can't see it. I can't tell why I'm smiling, I can't tell why my body is quaking with laughter, and I can't tell what Seamus is saying anymore. I pull my arm away to wrap around my mid-section while I laugh in his face. It frightens me by how mad I sound, gasping with loud, shrill fits of laughter, and it hurts my diaphragm, but I cannot stop it. By the time my glee has spiraled down to small giggles, Seamus is on his feet and holding his sword in two hands. I stare up at him with a smile as I roll over on my stomach and grab my Estus flask.

"Are you hollow?!" he demands to know, and I can't suppress the additional laughter that follows his dumb question.

"I was horrible!" It's all I can spare through the hilarity. "I'm horrible! Hah hah hah!"

Seamus' face is a sight to behold. He's torn between confusion and anger, with a little shimmering layer of disgust. "Stop it!" he demands, pressing his sword to the back of my neck. "I'll do it if I must."

I take deep breaths to calm myself because I can see the intensity of his seriousness. "I'm not hollow," I eventually manage to get out. "I'm just a horrible phantom!"

We both take time to gather our wits about us, while my heavy breathing echos off the stone walls. It's a hard reality check to me. All that time I spent down in the depths of the rat-hole, I believed I was a formidable warrior. I believed that I was invincible. To know now that I'm no better than anyone else when it comes to co-operation, that I am worse in fact, doesn't affect me negatively for some reason; it rather makes me see the true hilariousness of how wavering and unpredictable life can be. It's charming how life can shove your imperfections right under your nose and force you to face them. Or perhaps I am going hollow. Regardless, I find life to be a comical prank now.

Seamus is still standing away from me, like he's wary of a contagious disease. "Stop being weird," he tells me. "It's not my fault you're horrible, so don't push it on me."

"Am I scaring you?" I jab, still smiling as I push myself up to sit cross-legged, with my back to the flames.

His rebuttal is instant and biting. "You scared me when you failed that simple mission so easily."

I learn a lot about him from that response. I can tell he's the kind of person that takes teasing personally: a fatally self-conscience person that can't let insults just roll off their back. They stick to his skin and bury themselves under his flesh. Insults are unfair, but only to him. Insults to another, however, especially one he feels deserves them or anyone weak enough to make him seem more impressive, are accepted and welcomed.

Disgust washes over my frayed mind in a crippling wave, but I refuse to let it overcome and influence me for such a rude soul.

Seamus is idly examining the blade of his sword now with a crease perpetually between his eyebrows. My guess is that he is stalling and trying to look impatient but allowing me time to rest at the bonfire without admitting it. I reach down to pull at my hair to give my hands something to do as well. Instead, my fingers grab empty air. I bend my arm and twist it behind my back, groping until I feel the uneven ends of my hair stopping a little above half-way down my spine. He cut my hair. He must have done it with his sword. He cut my hair with his sword.

"Oh," is all I say and look up at Seamus. "Did you...?"

He glances at me briefly. "Your dirty hair was gettin' in my way," he says, but I don't understand him.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "It would sooner get in _my_ way. I'd been meaning to cut it for a while, but it had slipped my mind. Thank y-"

He interrupts me with a sigh and looks away with a scowl. "I don't care," he mumbles. "I just said I didn't do it for you."

I'm starting to feel as annoyed as he looks. I'm trying to be civil and have a nice conversation, because I don't want to believe that he really is as despicable as he makes himself out to be, but he seems determined to prove me wrong. I stand and take a step forward, positioning myself in front of him. He leans back, holding his sword to his chest and looking like he's never been more uncomfortable.

"You're wretched," I start. His mouth opens to protest, but I continue before he can spout a word. "I don't know how you were accepted into this covenant. If Gregory didn't care about you as much as he does, I would have long since put you in your place."

The unsteady muscles in his face give me an indication that I've scratched a nerve too hard, but a gasp is still forced from me when I feel his hand curl tightly around the back of my neck and shake me like a newborn pup. He had moved so quickly that I didn't see it coming. His sword is dangerously close to my abdomen.

"Shut your mouth," he growls, morbidly quiet. "Don't you ever mention Gregory to me again. You come here all of a sudden and pretend to know us? Crawl back to your filth, you dirty rat."

His hand releases my neck and moves to my shoulder to push me. My back hits the wall hard, and I wince, scrambling to keep my balance.

"Gregory doesn't care about me. No, he never gave a damn about me. And then some pretty girl comes along... I been with 'em longer than you have!"

I slide down the wall to sit on the floor. My mind stupidly notices that he called me "pretty", and I feel shame for focusing on something so trivial while I'm in such a dangerous space. He's glaring down at the sword in his hands that he's clenching with tight fists, and it frightens me. For the first time, I admit to myself that he frightens me.

"To hell with Gregory! I can't stand this bloody covenant. Weaklings and cowards..."

From down on the floor, he looks so big, though he's a slim man in light armor. He's larger than he appeared before. He's strong, and I'm afraid of him; afraid of him getting too close as he starts pacing back and forth, wild with anger. His loud voice makes my body jolt against the wall.

"Gregory never once told me he gives a damn about me! And I stayed with 'em all this time! I gave up my life for this! You think I want to be here?! With this blind old man? Can't even see what's in front of 'em, what I've been tryin' to tell 'em for ages! The world is _not_ _a_ _good place_."

Raw emotion is leaking from his voice and spilling into the electric air around us. I stay on the ground and keep my gaze at the floor until he silently drags himself to the bonfire and leaves me alone with my own empty thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

Particles of illuminated dust float through the air on lazy, dry currents and drift up towards the gray, clouded sky. The Altar of Sunlight, however, is glistening with rays of pure gold, as it always has and always will.

Gregory's voice is gentle when he tells me I look just as lovely with shorter hair. I'm just trying in vain to avoid eye contact.

He knew of my failure when I had refused to show him a Sunlight Medal upon my return. The way he continued to smile proudly even after I admitted to never having earned one made my heart sick more than a disappointed frown would have. "You did the best that you could," he had said. I suppose he was right, in a sense. I did the best that I could in that situation, which was horribly. I still don't have the courage to tell him of the way I froze like a frightened little girl in midst of battle.

Now we are standing by the Altar, at his whim to have a meeting with both Seamus and I. The Sun kisses the skin of only the two of us, though. Seamus is nowhere to be seen, which is typical as of late. After what I heard of his feelings, I wonder if he has decided to leave us for good yet. Regardless, Gregory insisted that we stand and loyally wait, and, before long, our waiting has turned into a bout of nonsensical chatter between us.

"What do you dream about, lady Synthia?" Gregory asks of me, with a whimsical smile wrinkling his cheeks. We are leaning against the sun-lit, stone wall behind the statue, and the air between us is light.

"Oh," I blurt out, to fill the silence while my distracted mind processes his question. "I don't know. Just. Things."

His green eyes meet mine knowingly, and I sigh in defeat. "Well. I do dream of things in the past. Old faces... Old bonds... I find it hard not to think about the past, sometimes."

A hum rumbles from deep in his throat. "I can understand that. Although, you and I are very different, young lady. I believe I dream mostly of things in the future."

My curiosity is piqued. "Truly? What do you dream of?"

The gray in his hair captures my eye when he shakes his head. "Ah. It's just my wild imagination." When I continue to look up at him with wide eyes, he chuckles and carries on. "Well, I do recall one particular dream. You were in it, in fact, as was Seamus. We were all..." He squints as if he can read the details of his dream in the air. "We were standing somewhere bright, upon a cliff above open water, and it was beautiful. The sun was setting... No, it was rising. There was a rising sun on the horizon, coloring the entire sky. There were other people as well. All kinds of people, just standing by, watching the sun rise. We were all... just, together. Do you understand? We were together."

I understand him perfectly. "This sounds like a fantasy place, your dream. It sounds wonderful."

His words are soft like mine when he speaks and just as honest. "Perhaps. I don't believe it must be a fantasy. I believe it can be a reality."

I try not to show it, but this conversation is making me impossibly alive: something precious I haven't experienced in a long time. His inspiring words are breathing life into my Undead soul, making me ache for his thoughts to come into existence.

"You're wrong," I say, more to myself than him. "Humanity is too different, too prone to conflict. A world like this could never be."

"One can dream," he reminds me softly.

_The world is not a good place._

'Yes,' I think to myself, 'one can dream.'

"I dreamt once," I start loudly with haste to be heard, but I calm myself when he gives me his full attention. "I dreamt once of a rising sun too, among other things. It was an odd dream, but it felt like, well, I don't know. I felt like that sun was..."

The corner of my eye catches a form moving, and both Gregory and I turn our heads to regard Seamus rounding the corner and entering the cavern. A sword rests heavy in his hand, but he has a tranquil look about him, like the eye of a storm.

Seamus' words are the harbingers of destruction against hope of a peaceful and comfortable life for any of us.

"I'm leaving. I'm going to join the Brotherhood of Blood."

Gregory is the first to react. He pushes his weight away from the wall and begins to advance towards Seamus. When the younger man takes a step back, Gregory stops moving.

"What are you talking about?" His voice is light, ignorant of the gravity inside Seamus' soul, or possibly in denial of it. I am glued to the wall as I helplessly observe what I had foreseen.

The crinkle in Seamus' brow and the wide-set stance of his feet speak to us more than his cool words. "I'm done with this covenant. I need to do something more..." He trails off, searching for an adequate word, but Gregory beats him to it.

"Exciting?"

Seamus bounces the sword in his hand, playing with its weight as he considers the word. "No. Not exactly. I just need to... do somethin' more."

Gregory shakes his head, but he doesn't protest. He simply looks like he doesn't understand. "You're doing things right now, Seamus. You've always been doing things. You're taking part of the most honorable covenant there is!"

"It's not about honor," Seamus' voice rises momentarily, but he sighs and is quiet for a while. When he speaks again, he is calm. "I'm not.. gettin' anything from this. Nothing I want. I can't help people anymore; I can't stand it. I just. I want to be recognized as a warrior. A good warrior."

"Warriors of the Sun _are_ recognized as good warriors," Gregory insists. Judging by the desperate tone of his voice, he has realized exactly how sincere Seamus is. "Those Sunlight Medals you receive are evidence of just that thing. Evidence that you have the strength to aid others and help them overcome."

"No," Seamus tilts back his head and looks to the ceiling of the cave, exasperated. "You don't understand. I want other people to know how good I am. I don't want to be respected. I want to be _feared_."

Gregory is silent. A disturbed look is stealing across his face, like the one I saw when I first met him and he discovered I was with the rats. No, not disturbed, I see now. Disheartened.

"I only wish you would reconsider," he mumbles. "Those in the Brotherhood, they're not good people. They're not like you or me. They're murderers and thieves and wanted vagabonds. I know you're not like this, Seamus; I know your soul is not truly like this. You're just a boy, and you want to be strong, and I understand that, but I think-"

"Not everything is about you!" Seamus yells suddenly. He enjoys acting tough, but his age is like a shining beacon on his sleeve right now. Gregory is right. He's delicately young.

Gregory closes his eyes as his chest rises and falls with a heavy sigh. "Very well. I cannot stop you from making your own choices in life. Go on then. Go. I just hope that you find the happiness you seek."

Seamus doesn't go. He doesn't move his feet at all. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and when he reveals his hand, he is cradling a handful of gleaming Sunlight Medals. He stares Gregory right in the eye as he overturns his hand and lets them thud to the dirty stone. "Fight me," he breathes.

I press myself up flat against the stone wall. Gregory is silent for a long while before he moves his hand to his back, where his greatsword is strapped. "This is beneath you..." I hear him whisper.

He pulls a small pouch of gold pine resin from his pocket and drags the substance across the blade of his greatsword, coating it with golden sparks of electricity. The air is crackling with raw energy now. I feel the hairs on my arms rise.

Seamus balances a sword in his right hand and a dagger in his left. He's starting to strafe to the right, closing the distance between them with each step. Gregory does not wait. He rushes forward with his sword held high above his head and brings it down hard. Seamus manages to roll away, but not before electricity catches his leg and burns a hole through his leather armor and into his flesh. He pushes himself off his feet in another roll towards his opponent and, when he regains his balance, swings his sword wide, hitting the older man on the shoulder. I can see Gregory's heavy armor reverberate from the blow, and he braces himself, stunned by it momentarily.

Seamus takes this time to back away and catch his breath. His body is heaving and his hands are shaking, but he runs fast ignoring his injured leg, circling Gregory, and thrusting the dagger at his back. Gregory turns suddenly and parries the blow with the broad side of his sword, but doesn't follow up with an attack. He lets Seamus duck away and gather himself. It's obvious that he's holding back from his young opponent, and this infuriates Seamus. He yells as he leaps through the air towards Gregory and slams his sword down hard. Gregory blocks it and stumbles back from the blow, but quickly recovers with a wide swing. Blood drips from Seamus' shoulder, and he's knocked from his feet.

It's plain to see that Gregory's age is catching up with him. His arm droops with the weight of his sword, but he swings it hard nonetheless, forcing Seamus to drive himself quickly on his feet to dodge. Where Gregory is merciful in his technique, Seamus is ruthless: aggressively swinging his sword with wild abandon and circling for a chance to stab the older man in the back. I foresee what happens, and it's Gregory letting Seamus take his life.

The blue cloth tied around Gregory's sword flows gracefully with each swing. The dance continues for a long, excruciating while as Gregory fends off Seamus' rapid attacks. The gold pine resin on his sword eventually wears off, the lightning crackling away, and Seamus takes advantage of the old knight's distraction of the change in his sword. I bite my lip as I hear a deep gasp and watch Gregory sink to his knees, confirming my predictions. He let Seamus defeat him; he could have easily warded off that back stab. As his physical body slowly fades and wisps away into the breeze, I stare at the space it used to occupy with a sharp pain in my breast. This is the end. This is the end of our unusual, squatting, sad excuse of a team of Sunlight Warriors.

Seamus' chest is being ravaged by deep gasps to regain his composure. His eyes dart around the cavern, searching desperately for something, and, when he's found it, his eyes lock on to me and he staggers over. I can feel the heat radiating from his body in how close he gets to me. He puts his face right in front of mine and every time he forcefully exhales, it fills every corner of my being.

"What do you see?" He not so much speaks as he seers the words into my brain. His voice is deep and broken, worn from exhaustion much like his body, but his eyes are alight with frantic, wild violence and victory. "What do you see?" His dark brown eyes burn into my soul. "What do you see right now?"

I open my mouth once, but nothing comes out. My voice is trapped; I'm like a shaking phantom. I look up into the storm of his eyes and answer his question with honesty, my voice as raw as his is.

"Humanity."

His face twists in a dissatisfied scowl, and, as he pushes his body away from me and pivots on his heel to leave, the back of his figure indents itself into my soul.

000000000

I find Gregory slumped over, defeated, at the nearest bonfire with his head in his hands. His flesh has shriveled and dried with his lost humanity, turning dark and horrific with the curse of the Undead. He looks weak, old, and frail. I don't know what I could say to him that wouldn't make the pain he's feeling any worse, so I don't say anything at all.

I choose to avoid him, avoid the pain and the conflict and the knowledge that he knows now, without a doubt, that the world is not a good place. I scrawl my name on the ground with golden letters and give him time to himself.

Time passes. My fear of exposure fades slightly to where I am no longer unable to move when co-operating with others. I still have not earned a single Sunlight Medal, but I can manage to last much longer than a few seconds with my host. I hone my blade on the perpetually existing beasts that wander the valley, and eventually I sit upon a throne of a large number of souls. What frightens me more than anything is the thought of Gregory, forever hunched over the bonfire. I have seen men fall victim to hollowing right before my eyes, and it is a devastating transformation. This ugly fate is not worthy of possessing Gregory. I place some souls on the ground next to him occasionally, but he refuses to pick them up.

When I chose to drop a human effigy, he jerkily turns his head to look up at me. His pure green eyes are not so green anymore. I can recall them shining like the light of the sun.

"You must move," I tell him, as firmly as I can. "Take it, please. Please, you must move and live, or you will go hollow!"

His breath comes in deep rattles from his chest; his words crawl off his lips at a snail's pace. "My dream, Synthia. It was a fool's notion."

No! I crouch down beside him and take his withered hand into mine. "That's not true," I try to convince him. "Seamus is horrible. Just one bad seed out of the bunch. There is still light in this world."

His breathing is the only audible sound as he thinks over my words. "Seamus is a good child," he rasps. "He is a good person. Everyone is a good person. That's the thing, my lady Synthia. It's this world... It corrupts. I knew Seamus for a long, long time. So long that I began to think of him as my own son. Ha! Can you imagine that? Some lonely, old knight fancying a grown man as his son. But I did. I met him at the Altar, and, oh, he was a sad thing. He was dirty and lost and wished for a covenant to flee to. Flee from what, I do not know. I told him the Sun would welcome him into its body, and he believed me. His face... He was joyous."

I let Gregory's hand slip out of mine as he continues. "I could always tell there was a fire in that boy. A burning fire craving to be seen. He just didn't want to be oppressed by this cruel world any longer. He just wanted to take control of his life. But he chose the worst kind of path to get there..."

His weak voice fades like the pain inside him will not let him continue. I open my mouth to speak, but he whispers in an utterly despairing tone. "He just reminded me so much of my own son..."

I am silent. Liquid traces a wet trail along the wrinkles of his cheek. "There is nothing left for me here, Synthia."

He has stolen all words from me.

He once moved very little and even spoke to me once to ask how I fared, but has become akin to a statue since our last talk. The piles of souls are starting to build up, creating a shining barrier around him, but he takes advantage of none of them. I know his will to live has dried up and left. I keep a wide berth from him, because I know what creature lurks on the dark horizon. It is just a natural occurrence in the life of an Undead, I reason with myself, and it makes the pain and frustration of this injustice dulled, if only a little.

I packed up my emotions safely before hand, storing away my sorrow and anger. Now I sit at the bonfire, across from him, my eyes trained on his body and my hand on my sword. He begins to stir. I promise to give him honor in death.

"Silas..." his voice is deep, almost inhumanly so. I put on the Ring of Whispers to hear him better, and the fact that it carries his voice more clearly warns me to stand and grip my sword in two hands.

"Where is my boy...?" He's squinting around now, like he is lost in fog and desperately trying to recover something precious to him.

"Where... You've taken him..." My heart starts racing, reminiscent of my first summoning, but infinitely faster. My breath is audible in the chamber. A large part of me doubts my ability to carry this through.

"No, no... My son... My very own son..." he starts crawling towards me on his hands and knees, and I back away, biding time to gather my courage. He is a pitiful sight.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I murmur it to myself, and to him. I stab my sword down on him, but it collides with his thick armor and his arms collapse, driving his face down against the hard stone. He whimpers.

"I'm sorry!" I put all of my energy into my blows this time. It is not my sword doing the work, I realize with horror; it is the bashing of his skull against the rock every time I beat him to the ground. My arms start to ache, but I don't stop until he ceases to rise. I don't close my eyes and hide from his fate. I watch his crumpled body slowly die and become limp as his soul leaves him behind. His body does not fade, for the bonfire nurtures to it no longer. He remains on the ground. I swear I can feel my heartbeat on the outside of my chest.

I lose track of time and how long I stand still, staring down at his corpse. The range of emotions I locked up come bursting out and flit through me like a fickle, rushing wind. As one leaves, another takes its place. One stands tall above all else, though, and that is anger. It's subdued; burning deep within my soul, but burning nonetheless.

I eventually find the strength to move my muscles again and reach down to pull the dirty blue cloth from Gregory's sword. I don't know what it signifies, and I never will. Maybe it once belonged to his lost son. I never got the chance to ask. I struggle with the knot and, leaning against the wall to have both hands free, retie it around the hilt of my own sword.

His body is a foul, awful sight. I crave to do something with it, but I know there's nothing I could possibly do to improve this situation. I cannot even bury his remains, surrounded by rock as I am. Perhaps, he wouldn't even want to be buried. A plan of action soon comes to my muddled brain, but it pains me to think of it.

I end up carrying it through, not because I want to, but because if I did not, I could live with myself no longer.

His decaying body is bathed in golden sunlight now, as his soul was. The light of the sky brushes against his withered, bloody face in a way that makes it teeter on the edge of beauty. I kneel respectfully on the steps before him.

"If you need somewhere to stay," I whisper, "you could stay here."


	5. Chapter 5

Crisp, dark waves crash against the fragments of rumble and spires that remain protruding out of the sharp blue depths. The orange lights spilling out of the grand tower I'm facing peer against the sapphire clouds like the glowing eyes of gods. It's a terribly beautiful sight; all of it, from the jagged edges of stone brick hanging above the deep water to the faint light of the sun breaking through the clouds on the distant horizon. The air is cool on my face from the breeze skimming the cold water, and it clears my mind and refreshes my heart.

Despair is still shredding my innards like I've swallowed hundreds of tiny rat claws. Despair at his decayed body. Despair at his final confession. Despair not only at the loss of a generous soul, but at my foolish naïvety of letting him affect my conscience while he still lived. That I cared for him sharpened the claws of sorrow to a paralyzing point. First the Rat King, and now this old knight. I will not make the same mistake of falling victim to budding emotions again. And yet, his bright green eyes...

There is a stark difference between deeply liking one and admiring their character, and with Gregory, I admit I submitted myself to the latter. He was weak, I thought, to allow incompetent cur to steal his grasp on life, weakened by the tragic loss of his son. Yet, the purity of his heart and soul was unparalleled; he threw himself, body and soul, into the blaring sun and never doubted it was the thing he wanted most. I continue to envy him and wish him still here beside me, and I know I always will.

The time to mourn has passed, though, with the eternity that drips from my footsteps. I have lingered in the sunlight with the company of his lifeless body for as long as I could bear. Now is the time to move, while I still feel alive. While fierce determination is my new, coaxing lover, gripping my limbs and squeezing the blood into my muscles. Nothing will hinder me and keep me from this task. Nothing.

I don't have time to stand and admire the beauty of this place. The Tower of Flame's watchful eyes track my silent dash through the winding path of threatening knights. Their massive weapons shake the stone beneath me, and I have no problem skirting around the edge of their range instead of confronting them and harvesting their souls. There is only one thing on my mind. When I stumble upon a room housing three of them, I jog out to the middle of the room, coming close to the knight in the middle, before ducking under the left one's rushing sword and sprinting until my lungs hurt. The thundering of their swords and maces pounding the stone behind me pushes me to the point of exhaustion. Once again, pain is woven into the path to a covenant, but I need no shining guides this time to mend my trepidation. As troubling as it is, I know the kindness that Gregory unintentionally instilled in me has hardened to a dark crust. I accept this loss, as I accepted the loss of infinite things his death ensured. I will be alone again, I think with glee, in my most comfortable, solitary space.

After ascending an old, wooden bridge, with knights relentless at my back, I sprint into what appears to be a cathedral with a tattered red carpet claiming the center expanse of the room: truly an important chamber. The precious carpet is ravaged with tears and a few of the pillars are piles of rumble on the stone, implying that there has either been a recent scrap here, or the test of time has worn this place to a ruin. Stepping with care onto the carpet, I can hear the alluring voice of a man beyond the far end of the room, his voice bouncing off the thin pillars and intricately carved statues. There are the figures of two men, I realize as I draw near, leaning on the railing of some balcony beyond the room.

I start to grapple with welling anxiety; that same sick feeling that seems to always rear its crippling head when human social confrontation is looming, but I have had enough of crippling fears. I march on towards the back of the room, my leather boots muffled by the red carpet. The deep sound of a man's voice warns me that the two are not yet done speaking, and so I linger by the entrance to the balcony, antsy and sparkling with nervous excitement. This time has finally come.

One of the men sweeps by me, and I don't get a glimpse at his face, but his figure towers over me as he passes by, an odd metallic scent wisping through the air in his wake. A red cape flutters briefly in my view before his long steps carry him away. A Knight of the Blue, I suspect. Or the leader of the covenant?

"Transient being. If you would speak, step forth."

A voice is as deep as the oceans that lap at these fallen structures, though it is lilting and calm. Air sweeps hair over my shoulder as I turn my head and see that a man remains at the balcony with his shielded back turned to me; his arms are crossed and his posture is immaculate. He is intimidating to the edge of frightening.

I step forth, as he bids. I dare to stand three steps from him, as I'm not sure of his status yet.

"Hello." Forever the awkward greetings. I grit my dry teeth and summon my voice more forcefully. This is all happening so fast, it seems. "I'm looking for the Knights of the Blue."

He turns in a brilliant flourish, and it captivates me. There is not a smile on his lips, but his dark blue eyes embody revelation. The halberd in his hand gleams almost as bright as his white steel armor. I observe that he appears to look as old as Gregory once looked. Gods... "Ah. Transient being. So you wish to join our Order." The tone of his voice borders on godlike; he speaks in deep, knowing statements. He does not acknowledge my physical appearance, the ragged state of my being, but looks right into my eyes. "Present your Token of Fidelity."

"My what?" is my instant, confused response, and I'm tempted to slap my cheeks raw as soon as the utterance leaves me for appearing a dazzled buffoon in front of him.

His brow furrows and fills me with spreading regret. "Transient being. This is no place for one such as you. Be gone. You are not needed here."

Anger fills me. This is happening too quickly. "Wait. What is a Token of Fidelity?" I realize this question pushes me farther away from him and his order, but I need the information. I was so angry, so bent on vengeance; I should have come here prepared instead of tramping off with a mind overfilling with blood-lust. I see this now, but the time to ready myself has passed.

He has turned his decorated shield to me, gone back to staring into the deep ocean before him. "Transient being. You would never make a Knight of the Blue, and I have nothing more to say." So says the God of the Blue.

My feet are glued to the stone. I am saturated by desperation almost to the point of pleading. That couldn't be the end of it. How could I ever hope to meet that demon again and rip his soul from his flesh if I cannot find him in this world? He could be anywhere. I need this, I _need_ it.

His shield addresses me where he will not, and soon I turn on numb feet and drift back towards the red carpet, the fabric blood stain guiding me to the cathedral's exit. I follow where the blood leads me. Acquiring this token is my top priority. Perhaps that dull 'town' Majula will hold the answers I seek.

Another red stain captures my eye as I step along the cloth and near the exit. A tall man is leaning against the far wall, examining me with a devious look about him.

His shoulders sport a tattered red cape.

I feel it's in my best interest to avoid contact with this stranger, so I keep my eyes to the carpet and quickly try to step by him.

"You don't have one."

His voice startles me when I'm close enough to examine him. He's tall, has black hair, and is young. There is nothing notably special about his appearance, though his eyes are frighteningly intense. They remind me of something... I knew it was a better fate to avoid him.

A shallow smirk graces his smooth lips. "You don't have one, huh?" I suspect he is a Knight.

The skin of my face burns against my will. "...No. I don't know- I don't have one."

He's leaning on the wall like he owns this room, like he owns this world. It jars me that it feels like he does. These Knights are so commanding, standing tall and shameless, as if they have conquered Drangleic with their presence. I take a step back, and his eyes fluidly follow my movements, locked on to my body. Wait...

"You-"

He interrupts me. "You get them from helping other players, you know."

Players? My mind is a scrambled mess under the weight of recognition. His odd choice of words is lost on me. He was that man: that horribly silent man next the woman in green that I couldn't get away from soon enough. I'm sure of it!

"I've seen you before," I tell him, wide-eyed and shocked.

He doesn't seem nearly as baffled as I. Apparently he doesn't understand the wild coincidence of our meeting again, after so long a time, or it's of no consequence to him. He holds this air about him, not necessarily condescending, but as if he's beyond my grasp. He may as well be on the other side of a fog wall.

He tilts his head, slow as drifting clouds. "Huh? Maybe. I've seen a lot of people, but a pretty girl like you? I'd remember."

Oh. So he's _that_ type of man."No," I agree, pulling together my fracturing mental state. "We've never met. I saw you once, but it was brief. I'm guessing you're a traveler, like me."

His tongue rolls around in his mouth; I can see it move beneath his skin. "Traveler is a nice way of saying it," he smiles to himself like he's told an admirable joke. I am lost to it.

Oddity flutters at the fringe of his being. Oddity seems to have possessed this entire establishment, from the looks of that godlike man standing motionless at the balcony. I would swear my soul on the fact that I never once saw him blink the whole duration of our encounter. The man before me is blinking in confusion at me right now.

"So, do you have a Token or not?" he demands of me, crossing his arms like I'm wasting his time, while he is the one leaning on the wall with nothing to preoccupy himself with.

I remind myself firmly that I have had enough of humanity. My interest in the interests of men is shedding from my mind at every passing moment. "I will find one," I tell him. I intend to leave him to the pressing matters that I am distracting him from.

"Well, I can drop you one," he suggests, perking up with a helpful smile. I am disturbed by his drastic change of mood. Such men can be dangerous.

My stomach turns before I answer. "Very well," I submit to him, though cautiously. I am still paying close attention to how far away my feet are planted from him. "You are a Knight of the Blue?"

He nods as he holds his hand out and drops an obscure, metal object that clinks off the stone by my feet. We both silently watch it drop, but only I stare at the thing after it has made its racket on the ground. He, on the other hand, is looking at me expectantly. This man is twisting my mind like soft clay. 'Why did he do that?' I ask of myself. 'Why didn't he just hand it to me?' I bend quickly and snatch the thing up before his smiling face. He's obviously attempting to coerce me into performing ridiculous and degrading things in his presence.

His hands are on his hips now. "Thank you," I mutter, annoyance clawing at my skull. What a horrible man.

"See? Now you can join the covenant," he says this so matter-of-factly, like he's said that a million times to a million different people "You get those from helping people, by the way."

I shove the object into my pocket, feeling disgruntled. "I've helped people," I grit out. "I am an Heir of Sunlight."

His dark eyes open in wonder. "Really? Oh, I can't wait until I get there. I want to join them so badly."

I take another small step back from this odd man, helpless of how my face twists in bewilderment. "Then why are you with the Knights of the Blue?"

"Eh." He shrugs, like I've just asked him why his favorite color is what it is. "I saw there was a new covenant here, so I figured I might as well join, right? I didn't like my old one very much."

My skin crawls with a perverse sensation. He joined this covenant on a whim: not because he was drawn to it, the thought of it arousing his innermost curiosity, and not for some overall reason or purpose, but because it was there. He tied his soul to that man beyond the room simply because he stumbled across him. I am at a loss for words.

"I heard you get to help other players here," he says, waving his hand lazily in my direction. "Like with the Sun."

"What?" I blubber, trying to crawl out of the nonsensical hole he's dug beneath my feet that is quickly growing deeper and sucking me in. "What are you saying? What do you mean by 'players'?"

It's his turn to take on a confused and insulted look now. "What? Other warriors..."

Understanding suddenly beats the confusion from my brain. He's insane, I realize. He is delusional, as the world has broken his mind. His view of life is that it is a harmless game. That's why he so spontaneously gave his soul to this covenant, why he refers to people as 'players' of this game of life. There is no other possible explanation. What a peculiar way to look at life. He must be a very broken man under all of those fickle moods changes. This dark world can do that to a man, and much, much worse. Yet he looks so young.

I crave to escape from his crazed, prying sight and get on with my mission. "Oh, yes," I mumble. "Of course. Thank you for this. The token. I should go now."

I don't dismiss myself until he responds. It nearly takes him an eternity with his slow, mystical voice. "Hm. Okay, yeah. Don't mention it. Well, good luck."

My mind is screaming by the time he finishes. "To you as well," I blurt out as I turn and begin taking long strides back to the god-creature. Life on the surface of the world is tearing me apart. I miss the bulging eyes of my King. I miss the damp, dark, safe crevices that lurk within the soil. I miss not feeling for the lives of men. I miss not having to avenge some old knight because he happened to stumble into my life. I miss having one covenant and one covenant only. I am flitting to and fro and giving my soul to nearly every being I see. I barely know who I am anymore.

I pause outside the balcony to try and calm the shaking in my hands. I am overwhelmed. I am easily overwhelmed. It is something that I discovered recently about myself, and if I had never crawled out of that hole, I never would have known this. I would have been better off.

I turn my head to glance over my shoulder and see that the delusional man is leaving, his red cape fluttering behind him as he jogs away at a steady pace to continue his wild journey across the world he owns. Perhaps I am the one who is broken. Lost purpose is a solid weight on my already bowing spine.

"Transient being." The god-man beckons beyond the threshold.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply before stepping forward. I don't open my eyes until my feet stop moving, and by the time they do, I am close enough to the Knight to be pressing against him. When he turned back around to face me, I know not. He doesn't pay any mind to the fact that I am invading his personal space; he stares down at me with a gentle smile in his eyes.

"You have obtained proof you are worthy of joining our Order. You may plant your roots in this Garden of the Gods, if you so wish."

I shuffle to the side and stand by the balcony railing to make things easier for the both of us. I dare not tell him that I didn't earn that Token myself. Something about the way his eyes are dancing with mirth tells me that he already knows.

"You are enemies of the Brotherhood, correct?" I ask, my voice small and hesitant.

He has swiveled to face me, and now both our hips are resting against the railing. "That is correct. There are those malicious ones who would threaten our Order, threaten our Blue Apostles. We will not allow it."

I watch the way his eyebrows pinch together at the edge of his gold-rimmed helmet as he speaks. I suppose there's no better time to voice my concerns. "I'm hunting for a man... A Brother of Blood. I seek to make him atone for his crimes."

For the first time, his lips arch with a delicate, proud smile. "Ah. A noble quest. One that the Order faces quite often. Worry not. You would hunt many such fiend in the Order. I doubt not that you will extract vengeance."

"Many?" I ask. I hadn't been informed that I would be hunting any others. It escapes me why that hadn't crossed my mind. I foolishly had some notion that joining would automatically give the knowledge of Seamus' location and present him to me like a helpless hog at a feast. Of course I must dedicate myself to finding him; things of this manner can never be that easy.

"Indeed," his deep, lilting voice continues to flow like honey into my ears. "You would seek the intruders that dare assault our Blue Apostles, and other innocents. Such is your duty as a Knight of the Blue."

I nod wordlessly, nipping at my lip in thought. The man shifts the great halberd in his hand idly. I nod again, and then once more. "Okay," I mumble. "Okay." My eyes flick up to meet the dark blues that were trained on me the whole while. "I wish to join."

It is soft and cold. Ice invades the Sun and light fades to darkness. The rays freeze to a sharp point and turn my skin blue. My soul shivers alone in the snow and my teeth shatter themselves on each other, but the death brings something new. I can see him on the inside of my eyelids. I can see him cowering before me, bleeding and broken. My covered soul blooms with purpose. Targray proclaims me a Knight of the Blue, and I release my grip on warmth and embrace resolute, burning Justice.


	6. Chapter 6

Justice burns hotter than even the sun's flames, I find. It is insanely deep, embedded and digging into my soul and carving away all that stands between it and actualization. Where the Sun brought glowing warmth, justice burns as ice does; so frigid that when you lay even a finger upon it, your body quakes as the tip of your finger freezes over and dies. It is wonderful.

It has brought me to realize my true purpose in this world and, with that, all the glorious responsibility it entails. I am a Knight of the Blue. I am no longer a small girl hunkering in the shadows of filthy rats. I am no longer a follower of a man who worshiped the sun like it was his own. I am no longer afraid of staring into the eyes of the murderer at the apex of my life. I am a seeker of vengeance: an extractor of tainted souls and an executioner of sins. I am a Knight of the Blue, pure in a world of tainted souls.

Targray gazes upon me with pride each time I meet him to strengthen our bond, and now, as the cerulean glow that envelops me burns bright enough to lap at the air in the wake of my footsteps, I can feel his proud gaze guide my blade through all the regions of Drangleic.

Fragments of a cracked blue eye orb that I crush in my palm bounce off the stone of the Iron Keep bridge. The light that pours forth from the innermost fragments wrap my body in a fog and carry my soul through the fissure of time into the world of some poor sinner. My body rights itself on the warm stone, such a familiar feeling now, and when I open my eyes, I glimpse the flash of something bright on the opposite side of the bridge and smile. Most sinners run like trapped rats when punishment comes from them.

I start my trek across the bridge slowly, eyes glued to where I saw the brightness, a new red rust scimitar grasped with both hands. My old falchion is now a small number of souls in my satchel. With glory comes souls, and with souls comes shiny, new possibilities.

I hear the sinner before I see him. The overhead swing of a sword would have sliced through my skull if I hadn't noticed the swish of air it made when he lifted it over his head. His foolish prediction was too soon; as I neared one of the pillars at the end of the bridge, he leaped out and expected to take me by surprise. I can already sense this kill is going to be an easy one.

I roll away, nimble on my feet, and back-peddle to put some distance between us. He's desperately aggressive, each swing of his sword cutting at the air right in front of my nose, until he too backs off, panting with fatigue, and lifts his magnificent shield in front of his body. That is the thing I saw shining behind the pillar, I see now. His shield is like a giant, glistening mirror, gleaming my reflection back at me when I look into it with curious eyes. I can't remember the last time I saw my own reflection.

I see the blue wisps that lick at my form in the mirror, and beneath those, I see a thin girl in dark armor standing up straight with an impossibly sharp weapon in her small hands, some manner of ribbon tied to the hilt. The longer I stare, the longer my body seems to separate from what my eyes are seeing; I feel as if I am a soul unbound by flesh. The girl's face is scrunched up with an expression I can't place, one akin to anger or determination, but something more, something deeper. What would be a pretty face distorts with something that seems the opposite of pretty, something grotesque and vile that crawls within her eyes. Darkness lurks in every feature of her face. She is dark and unpure.

A sword slices through the flesh of my bicep and my body instinctively drops to the ground to roll away. I blink with confusion and pain, trying to gather myself and remember where I am, my feet scrambling at the ground for stability and my own flesh feeling foreign to me. What was that? Some horrid, bewitching sensation stole over my mind when I gazed into his shield and saw my reflection, as if the mirror pulled my soul straight out of my body and forced me to look at it. Although, I avoid looking into his shield again for the duration of the fight, I can't seem to escape the dazed prison it ensnared me in. If the mirror truly had the effect that I suspect it had, can what I saw be trusted? My mind is racing miles away from this bridge, and it's as if someone has tied cloth over my eyes.

The sinner's body fades in the end and I stand victorious, but the usual pleasure I gain from watching their murderous bodies collapse into mist doesn't sweep over me. The moment I'm back in my own world, I throw my sword down with a violent scream. I can't escape it! The image I saw reflected in the mirror bothers me down to the pit of my soul and tears at my mind. The eyes on that girl were the eyes of a sinner! They were the eyes of a murderer, spilling with blood lust and rage and telling tales of past innocent souls ripped away. Those dark eyes were nothing like the prideful eyes of Targray, pure and righteous and as full of mercy as they are of ruthlessness. There was no mercy in those eyes!

I feel like throwing myself into the lava that surrounds me with how much terrible pain is thudding through my mind. Was it all for nothing?! Were all those sinners I punished meaningless in regards to cleansing my soul? If not, what separates us? What makes me any different from those I cut down? I wonder if when Targray looks into my eyes he sees what I saw, and the thought cripples me.

By the time I gather the energy to collect my sword, make sure Gregory's blue cloth is still intact, and travel to the Cathedral of Blue, I have had time to dwell on the thought of being helplessly tainted and dig myself into a deep pit of no return.

As soon as I am transported to the bonfire in the small room down from the balcony, I find myself looking at a familiar face. The insane young man is leaning on the wall and staring at nothing in particular with a vacant look. It has been quite some time since we last met, and though I remember his presence making me anxious and his insanity making him impossible to understand, he is a welcome and comforting sight. I stand and quickly move in front of him, looking up at his face. I must know if what I saw was true.

"Look at my eyes," I command him with a shaking voice, but he does not acknowledge me. He continues to stare at the opposite wall. "Please, look at me, please!"

He is silent and motionless, like I am invisible to him. Frustration starts to nag at me. I know that he is a broken minded man, but this is more important!

"Look at me!" I yell into his face and shove him, my hands weak against his tall frame, but he just stumbles to the side and regains his balance, all while staring forward and not reacting whatsoever.

I feel like yelling until my lungs hurt and clawing my vile skin off. I pace circles around the bonfire, muttering curses until I spot movement coming from his direction. Storming over to him, I fist the red cape at his shoulders, give it a yank, and force him to look at me. His eyes widen and he blinks before a kind smile appears.

"Hey, you're that girl! Wow, I didn't know you'd be here. Where have you-"

"What were you doing?" I demand to know, all cautiousness of his mental disorder fading away from me. I am anxious and frantic and I can barely pay any mind to the words that rush out of my mouth. My purpose in life is teetering on a precipice and threatening to slip away forever. If I cannot be a Knight of the Blue, what hope is there for me accomplish my goal? If I cannot accomplish my goal... "You didn't respond to me. What's wrong with you?"

His smile doesn't fade, but it falters. "Huh? Oh, sorry. I was away for while. I needed a little break, you know?" He grins.

...What.

Like a cool bucket of water being thrown over my head, his fantastical words of insanity douse my burning anger and frantic mind, and I realize just how childish I was being, stomping around in circles and yelling at those who didn't deserve it. I was overthrown with the thought of not living up to Targray's standards, to my own new standards as a Knight of the Blue. I just want to be as pure as possible, images of ascending attracting me forward; ascending beyond what I once was. The thought that I'm not, that I never can, tears me apart. My tainted soul stinks of rat's flesh and rotting bones, of all those who suffered at my poisonous hands. Can I never truly escape my past in that horrible pit? The shaking, chattering voice of the small rat I once held in my arms cackles at me in my mind. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves.

I realize I am being the odd one now, gripping at the man's cape silently as I think, inches away from him. I see his eyebrows rise and fall as he murmurs, "So, we're uh, pretty close here..."

Oh gods. I release him instantly and take a large step back, wiping my hands on my sides while he chuckles gleefully. One look up into his eyes and his chuckles cease.

"Sorry," he mutters, but I ignore him.

"What are you?" I ask in grave seriousness, because he is so absolutely perplexing that I suspect he is not of this world.

He looks at me like he suspects the same of myself. "Um. I'm a person."

I doubt that, but chose not to confront him. As much as I jump to assume the worst, he most likely is just some young, broken man. I internally scold myself for not being more sensitive to his illness.

"So, did you need something?" he asks, though before I open my mouth, he continues. "Because I've been meaning to ask you something, but I didn't know where to find you. I went all the way back to Majula, and you weren't even there."

I wonder why he thinks I would be squatting at that hell hole Majula. His friendly voice washes over me, a tone of voice I have not heard in a while, and I rest a hand on my hip. "What do you want to ask?" I inquire.

"Do you offer your summon sign in front of bosses, because I really need help, but everyone I summon is horrible, and Lucatiel is nowhere to be found."

I blink. I open my mouth. I close my mouth. I open it again. "Wha-"

"And, by the way, how many kills _exactly_ does it take to level up in the Blue covenant, because I swear, I've been fighting for hours, and Targray hasn't said anything about it!"

I don't even bother to open my mouth this time. "Honestly, I'm thinking of switching to something else, because this just isn't rewarding enough, you know? What do you think?"

I take a few breaths and a few seconds to pull myself together with all the information he just spewed at me, and yet all I can manage to mutter out is, "You astound me."

His mention of Targray returns me to my earlier thoughts and worries, which, once so life-changing, now seem so distant from me. This man has completely pulled me away from the tattered state I was in only moments ago. He alone made me forget all that I was panicking and tearing myself apart over. His insanity captured me, whisking me away from reality and dragging me into a world cloying with madness and nonsense. I feel strangely drawn to him and the carelessness of his nature. It is a refreshing thing to be surrounded by after all this time with the overzealous "Gods" of the Blue.

His smile has returned, I notice, as I stare at him in wonder. "Was that meant to be a compliment?"

Once again, I ignore his hopelessness. "What brought you to this land?" I ask instead, curiosity guiding my tongue.

He crosses his arms and gazes up at the ceiling. "I wanted to go on an adventure," he says, sounding wistful, "but I suppose I also had no choice. I just kind of ended up here."

I nod thoughtfully. Such is the past of many souls who end up in Drangleic. "You're not like anyone I've ever met before," I tell him, because it's true.

His young face brightens at my words, his features coming to life. "Thanks. You know, you're not like anyone else around here either. I don't really understand your purpose, though."

My purpose..? If he's referring to what I think he is, then we are in a similar state. I don't understand my purpose either. I had thought it was to guard the Rat King, but I was carried away from that. Then the Sun tried to breath life into me, but that journey soon ended as well. Now, as I stand here, a Knight of the Blue, it seems even this fate was not meant to be. Perhaps I have no purpose. Perhaps I'm merely floating through life with no meaning to any of it. I wonder about such things often.

I look down at my scuffed shoes to make sure I still stand upon a solid patch of ground before I look back up into his eyes. Everything seems surreal when he's near me. "I fear..." I start, but hesitate. I ring my hands and run my eyes over the chest piece of his armor. "I fear that I am not meant to stay here. That I'm not meant be a Knight of the Blue."

"Then don't be."

His words are like a slap to the face. "What do you mean?"

"Don't be a Knight of the Blue. Go be something else."

I fail to understand him and shake my head. "But... What will I be?"

"Whatever you want to be."

Once again, I am at a loss for words.

"How do I know what I want to be?"

"You decide."

He leaves me with a few nonsensical words of how he's going to have another go at "the boss", a friendly pat on the shoulder, and priceless wisdom before he kneels at the fire and fades to go conquer another part of this world. I still don't even know his name.

I stand next to the bonfire and stare at the blue cloth on the hilt of my sword. For a moment, I almost consider removing it and tossing it into the flames. I decide not to.

Targray is as regal and stoic as he ever was. He will never change, I realize, and I will never change if I stay here.

He looks disappointed when I empty a handful of cracked blue eyes orbs into his open palm, and his lilting voice tries to persuade me to reconsider. He tells me he can see the pure justice in my soul, my potential for being the greatest Knight that ever was. I dig the Crest of the Rat out of my satchel for him to see and tell him to look into my eyes. His pleas die away.

I tell him what we are both thinking: that I am murderer, that I will always be a murderer, and that I must seek my vengeance in a murderer's way. He still looks disappointed when he states that I had so much potential but that now I am no longer fit to be a Knight of the Blue. He doesn't sever our deep bond. That is something only I have the power to do.

His eyes don't betray even an inkling of sadness or remorse when I tell him sorrowfully that we will most likely never meet again. He is the God of the Blue, after all. I don't know why I would expect any different.

He bids me a safe journey, but warns that if I am ever confronted by another Knight, they will offer no mercy to my traitorous soul. With a smile, I tell him I would wish no less of them.

Burning ice still envelops my soul when I turn my back on the emotionless god at the balcony, but I decide to not let it consume me completely. I let it do that before and the concept of justice nearly drove me to the depths of madness. I nearly turned my back on myself, the only person I can trust entirely in this world, all for the hopes of reaching an impossible level of purity in body and soul. I rather enjoy myself the way I am, I decide, my past and my future coloring my soul. This color, however, is not meant to be blue. Though the Knights have honed my blade and furthered my purpose, I decide to be something else. I decide to be something more.

I am indeed still that small girl who once hunkered in the shadows with rats. I am still the girl who hung on Gregory's every word as his soul died away. I am very afraid of staring into the eyes of the murderer.

Seamus' time will certainly come, but it will not be a Knight of the Blue that takes his life. It will be Synthia.

I haven't felt this awake in all my time spent alive.


	7. Chapter 7

I float down the stone steps and into the arms of the flames. Though I gained nothing but battle experience from the Knights, I still hold them fondly in my soul. The experience has helped in some way I cannot fully understand, and I could not hope to articulate my feelings to Targray. He has helped me grow in an indescribable way. I doubt he would even understand if I were to try.

My eccentric friend is hunched down close to the woman in green when, after giving my curt farewells to the perfect Blue Knight, I drift back on the bonfire to Majula. The two are hovering near the edge of the cliff by a gnarled tree with their backs to me, his head inclined to murmur to her in hushed tones and her small frame gently swaying from side to side as she listens. One would never be able to tell that she was moving at all if they did not stare as attentively as I.

They appeared as if a couple of affectionate lovers, bent close, though barely touching one another: close enough for the expanse of her emerald cloak to brush and entwine with his red cape when the wind rushed up from the water. As I stand by the fire and regard them, I begin to think they really _are_ lovers, huddled close as they are, and the longer I stare, the more I guiltily feel like my gaze is intruding on some intimate moment shared between the two. I avert my eyes from the pair.

Though I try to focus on the crackling flames, the corner of my vision glimpses him drop to one knee beside her, a white glow enveloping his body as she briskly waves an object over him. The glow shines with magical capacity, though I haven't the faintest clue what their ritual entails, nor do I wish to know. Whatever private exchange transpired between them seems over however, as the man stands with a grateful nod and turns on his heel in my direction. Once again, I avert my eyes, nervous over the possibility that he noticed me staring at their odd transaction.

An excited gasp that doesn't fit his manly stature leaves his throat, and I look up again to see him jogging over with a charming smile gracing his lips. The woman in green meets my eyes with an intense gaze over her shoulder for less than a second before she turns to teeter on the edge of the cliff again.

"Hey!" he greets me like we are old friends, like the conversation we just had not long ago didn't transpire. "I keep seeing you a lot, huh?"

I drink up his appearance when he squats down to sit beside me on a rock and politely scoot over to allow him space. There is a new sword strapped to his back. "Hello," I greet him quietly. "I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you were going on a journey to kill 'the boss'."

He looks at me with a dashing face, with one of his eyebrows raised and a smirk on his lips. "You kidding? I already beat the boss." He digs with excited hands into the bag on his waist and cups something in both palms, like it's something precious to him. When he turns his hands over, a particularly large and gloriously glowing soul drifts slowly down to land soft as a feather by my feet. I glance at him for reassurance before I cup my hands around it in the dirt and retrieve it. It is warm and flows like water around my grasping fingers.

It is common knowledge that the Undead can read the will of a soul simply by coming into physical contact with it, and I can immediately sense that this is the soul of some kind of steed, some mad horse creature created to torment. To execute. A powerful, important soul.

I cradle the soft embodiment of power and life in my hands for a while longer while I turn to look at the young man. "It's impressive you succeeded that quickly," I tell him in earnest. I only just watched him whisk away on the bonfire before coming here myself.

"It wasn't really that quick," he says, fiddling with his metal gauntlet and staring at the soul protectively, "I'm embarrassed to say, but it actually took about four more summons."

'Four more summons?!' I think, bewildered. It certainly couldn't have taken me that long to travel back to the bonfire of Majula. Realization hits me soon enough and brings a shameful flush to my face for forgetting so prevalent a concept. Time is convoluted; it always has been and it always will be. Where minutes passed for me, hours, even days could have passed for him. The fact that either one of us could phase through a gap at any time and cease to exist before the other is a possibility, and a fact that will always be jarring to me. These wild concepts slip from my mind often, when I am so tangled in the web of life, but this man does have a way of grounding me.

"Oh," I blurt out, imprisoned within my mind, "I see."

I almost don't notice the deep chuckle that slips from him. "You're not really one for words, are you?"

When I turn in surprise, his eyes stare deeply into mine and I don't know what to say.

His smile grows, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkles. "Exactly."

I still do not respond. As reluctant as I am to do so, I overturn my hands and drop the soul in front of him, following his strange ritual of dropping items he wishes others to pick up. He leans over and scoops it up fluidly. I wonder how many people he's gotten to perform such an act for him, to cater to his own personal preferences.

It's stunning to ponder on just how close I've gotten to this tall, eerie, insane man in such a short time. It is true that we are physically close; his dirty, steel boot is nudging slightly against my own thin, leather one in a way that screams of comfortable friendship, but we are close in another sense as well. I have the faintest feeling we are connected in some other way, internally. I am not easily made friends with, I realize this about myself because I make a conscious effort to make it so, but this man, this man who I would quickly and comfortably call a friend and can now easily hold a conversation with, seemed to worm his way into that slot in my life without my say or consent. I have a feeling that even if I had resisted him, we would still be sitting here, side by side, we still would have ended up this way, sharing smiles and deep inner thoughts. He was a constant in my life that has just been lying in wait to step out of the shadows: something that I had no choice in dealing with.

So unlike anyone else in all of Drangleic... In a sudden fit of mad astonishment, I suspect he is one of the boundless primordial beings that once spawned from the dawn of the very first flame, but I quickly regather my wits and dismiss that foolish notion. He is nothing more than a man; a charming, charismatic, and admirable man, but a man nonetheless.

I have never truly had a friend before. Maybe all this human interaction has made me so malleable that I believe I see amazing things in even the oddest of people. Judging by his interaction with the woman in green, he has wormed his way into the life of not just myself.

I allow his heavy arm to jab into my bicep and jostle me with his weight.

"Hey, by the way, I found a new covenant, if you're still interested in that kind of thing."

"Mhm..." I murmur, so deeply lost in my own thoughts about him. His voice is a comfortable lull behind it all.

"Yeah. It was the creepiest thing I've seen so far. This little, tiny man was there. They were called the... Brothers of Blood, or something. Brotherhoods? Brothers. Whatever."

Convoluted time stops. I look at his dark pupils with wide eyes. My expression cannot be anything less than desperate and ravenous.

"Can you show me?"

* * *

The stench of dried blood and rotting fluids is the first thing to assault my prying nose. There are bits of corpse and shards of bone littering the floor of the large, circular chamber, the entrance to the location that hounds my resentful thoughts. The particles of poisonous wafts from the forest creatures that cling to my nostrils do their part to make the experience that much more unpleasant. Where the copse chattered with critters and beasts alike, there is a deep, unsettling silence that had stolen over this edifice, like a murderer's light breath tickling the hairs of one's neck. I am balancing on the edge of paranoia as I creep my way around the dimly lit, curved walls.

There are steel bars and hanging lanterns and other metal contraptions protruding from the dirty stone that speak the endless tales of countless sufferers. Full human skeletons lie in piles of broken bones. This place reeks of death.

I pass under what appears to be the remains of a large gate, dented metal clinging precariously to the surrounding stone, forcefully bent and warped, like the hands of a Giant have ripped it clean off. Scuffed and cracked stone lead the way through the yawning gate.

To my immediate left, there is a lighted door way, an opening in this circular tomb, and I inch into it gratefully with a tight grip on my sword. The beginning of a stairway is not too far off in this hall, I can see, illuminated by more suspended lanterns. The glass of the lantern closest to the stairs is marred by a splatter of blood.

Each step upwards, each boot repeatedly grappling the stone, sends my heart plummeting into a deeper state of frantic pounding. Though the odds are slim, I foolishly expect him to be waiting for me beyond the last step, with a dagger in his slimy hand and a vile scowl on his sinful lips. My breath comes in irregular pants; I am terrified. It seems all that time spent in trying to prepare myself, in trying to steel my weak heart, have been spent in vain. I am afraid.

I peek above the lip of the floor, and the undeniable warmth of a bonfire spits heat onto my already drenched palms and blinds my squinted eyes. I try to scan every corner of the room as quickly as possible, but there are pillars everywhere, he could be behind any one of them! I bite down on my lip hard and dash up the last few steps, nearly tripping over my own panicked feet, and as I pass the first pillar, my body is forced to a stop by shock. I am standing directly in front of a small, motionless creature resting against a wall.

It is surrounded by a tiny fort of melting, white candles on either side of it, and the wall behind it is spattered with patches of dried blood like a morbid headdress. Its filthy, pointed hat comes just below the middle of my chest and its cracked, bare feet are no bigger than two of my fingers lied side by side. There is a small scythe strapped to it's back.

A moment passes in which I silently stare in horrific fascination, my limbs paralyzed by the entire spectacle: its tiny limbs, the blood saturating its clothes and the wall, its quiet and motionless state. A weak part of myself wishes my friend had not left me at the entrance of this horrible structure with only a mere part on the back.

It is silent and I am silent. My arms begin to raise my sword with slow, careful jerks.

"What's this? One of you coming all the way to my doorstep? Aw... I hate it when my food crawls onto my plate."

His voice is deep like he's summoning his words from the very base of his throat and has an odd, calm fluctuation. He's pronouncing every syllable of a word precisely yet speaking in a bubbling murmur at the same time. It's sound is both boyish and manly, both sophisticated and savage, all at once. I'd be lying if I did not admit his voice had an attractive, bewitching tone to it, though I cannot pinpoint where the disturb ends and the allure begins. Perhaps neither one ends nor begins at all.

He is akin to a condescending bird looking down on its prey, though is too taken by bemused interest to gulp it down. I could never have been prepared my nerves for such an enchanting voice to come from such a tiny, miserable looking creature. How reminiscent... The most I can see lurking beneath the dark shadow of his hood is his crooked mouth and his chin.

My arms lowering my sword in defeat are like phantom limbs to me. A sickly, sweet scent of blood floats on the air.

"Who are you?" I demand to know. The sounds that leave me are stern, nothing like the wavering mush that is coursing through my veins.

One of his small feet shuffles forward, and though the expanse of his body is less than half of my height, I take a step back, cautious. An important lesson learned from the rats: the size of an opponent in no way influences their ability to take a life.

"A man. A foe," the being articulates vaguely, in the deep, lilting tone of a patient mother explaining something basic to her child. I flush in anger against my will. "Don't they tell you anything?"

I wish that I could have full view of his face, that I could see him look at me, that I could see him acknowledge me in some way that says he is listening to my words. He is surprisingly intimidating, not dissimilar to Targray.

"Do you know where I could find the Brotherhood of Blood?" I find these safety words leaving me quickly, in an effort to avoid any further degrading conversation, and wonder how many times it's been. 'I am looking for insert covenant here,' I think to myself in disgust. 'You fleeting swine.'

The demon laughs, or produces something close to a laugh. Breath leaves his mouth quickly in a few heavy, gleeful pants. His small hands curl themselves into tight, shaking fists at his sides and insanity crawls rampant on his rasping vocal cords. "Oh. Heh heh... Can't say I've heard of them."

The moment these gasped words leave him is the moment I understand.

I thumb the blue cloth on the hilt of my sword, and, when I speak, the mush in my limbs has solidified. "May I ask you something, _Brother_?" The stale stench of blood shifts, blossoming anew, and he smiles sweetly at me with pursed lips. "And will you tell me the answer?"

His candied smile is my response. I can see his chest rise and fall with each quick, heavy inhale and exhale. The material of his gloves stretches around his quaking fists, and my blood rushes at the sight. There is a cryptic moment that hovers like the rot in the air between us. His smile falls, slow as blood dripping down a smooth wall, and slides into a sickened glower.

"Blue Sentinel." His voice is as calm as it was when the first words of our conversation flowed from his lips. "I'd rather savor your blood on my tongue." His bare foot raises to take a step.

My hands twitch at the threat, and I find myself watching the glint of a throwing knife thudding into the center of his chest. The force behind my throw nearly pins his small body to the wall. He grunts, his shoulders curling around the wound, and his lips twist in anger, yet he still growls out in the soft tone of one reprimanding a child.

"That hurts..."

The sharp tip of my sword is aligned with his head, waiting for my arms to put enough weight into guiding the blade to its target. I desire to see more of his face, so I tease at the edge of his hood with the rusted tip of my scimitar.

He moves faster than my occupied mind can sense, and with a flick of his thin wrist, his scythe slices the shins of my frantically back-peddling legs down to the bone. My injured flesh forces me to my knees and, when I thud noisily to the stone, he hooks his scythe so it hugs the back of my neck and tugs hard. We are eye to eye now. I can feel the curved blade beginning to sink into my flesh, the creek of the wooden handle under his grip like a whisper in my ear.

I could have easily twisted my sword around and hurt him. I could have easily knocked the scythe from his miniature hand. My eyes, however, are bewitched by his actions. He's painfully tugging my knife out of his chest, yanking with short, violent motions, and, after rotating his hand so the sheen of blood is captured by the candlelight, he licks his own blood off, with one sluggish drag of his tongue. His saliva shines in its wake. I'm not entirely disturbed; I have seen more horrific things performed before my eyes, though it is startling. Before my mind catches up to my limbs, his hand darts forward and jabs the knife into my abdomen, and I can feel it dig its way in between two of my ribs. I command myself to suppress a gasp of pain, but he stiffens his hold on the knife and _twists_.

My body jolts out of its previous stupor with a scream and I push back in instinct like a raving, wild animal. When the waiting scythe buries itself deeper into my neck, I duck, lurching to the left and out of his trap, making sure to drag my scimitar across his face as I push away. There is a sharp yelp, and the knife is ripped from my flesh and left in his hand while I scoot back from him on my bottom. Pain bites at my shins ferociously.

I don't have to look to know what he is doing with the blade of the knife, but I watch him regardless, panting and simmering. The cleaned blade clinks off of the stone when it is dropped by his careless hand.

"What was that?" his voice is still calm and infuriating, still belittling and echoing off the walls and burying into my open, seeping wounds like a parasite. There are clumps of black objects on the floor that he's nudging at with his small foot, but I fail to distinguish them. Every breath brings forth a grimace of hellish pain. "You were going to ask me questions?"

I push my aching body upright, stubborn to show this demon any further sign of defeat. Though I stand above him now, he towers over me, nothing but dark cloth and pale skin with red sliding down his cheek and caressing the bottoms of his feet. A warm, confident smile paints across on his lips once again, and his gouging voice leaves no room for even a moment of refuge. "I think you'd rather spill my blood, wouldn't you?" He kicks my throwing knife in my direction with the side of his foot, but I remain standing straight, with my shoulders back in a mockery of bravery. My abdomen weeps at the thought of bending. "You liked watching me bleed," he gushes, and his voice takes on a gasping excitement to it, infinitely giddy. It sends a wave of nausea through my stomach.

I neither confirm nor deny his statement. "My quarrel is not with you!" I argue, breathless and seething. My deep voice barely sounds like my own. "There is only one man I've come here for, and you're not him."

He turns his back to me without another word, showing what appear to be four pointed spiders legs sprouting from under the shaggy collar of his dark robe that bob in unison with each step he takes. Whether the odd things are for decoration or for some other purpose is beyond my knowledge. I watch him make his way back to the enclosure of the candles, with the warmth of the neighboring bonfire at my back inviting me like never before. Sucking in what little breath I can, I bend with a grimace and retrieve the throwing knife at my feet. When my bending torso brings my face closer to the ground, I recognize what the limp clumps of black are on the floor. They are clumps of hair. If his scythe bit into my neck with ease, my hair was as much hindrance as the transparent wings of a butterfly.

As I stuff my wet knife into my satchel, I sniff miserably like a pathetic little girl and feel the uneven edges of my hair tickle at my jawline. My will to resist is crawling away and curling up to die. 'It seems it's becoming a hobby amongst horrendous, revolting men to take off chunks of my hair in confrontation,' I think with bitterness eating away at every cell of my hurt being. 'I'll be bald before long.'

The tiny demon's arm extends and he waves listlessly at the bonfire. I feel little shame as I do as he bids and limp over, dragging my weak, split legs and practically collapsing by the flames. Its warm, healing properties spread their way through my body instantly and lick at the knitting flesh of my wounds until I am whole again. I close my eyes and a gratified sigh is pulled from me as my aches and pains fade to nonexistence. I feel bits of hair that must have been stuck to my neck with blood tumble away from my sensitive, clean skin as I stand, refreshed. I can't stop my hand from coming up and pulling at the short hairs that now barely pass my lower earlobe, painfully self-conscience.

The demon has reclaimed his home between the candles, facing the wall and smearing my blood into his wicked mural with a sopping glove. Both our blood has been added the painting of this room; drips and smears of it color the floor.

"I like you." His voice is idle and calm, as neutral as my friend's when he greeted me back in Majula. I don't know how to respond. "You're soft and you bleed easily, but you make others bleed easily as well." He turns back around, and I'm disturbed to see there is no smile on his lips. "You can't defend yourself, but if you're going to bleed, others are going to bleed with you." I silently ponder over his observation, wondering whether it wears the skin of a compliment or an insult as he continues. "I like that a lot. Blue Sentinel."

"I'm not a Blue Sentinel," I grit out impatiently. For some reason, despite my purpose for coming here, Seamus is now lurking at the very back of my mind, forgotten. "I left them long ago." My lie isn't entirely untrue. It could have been long ago. Time is meaningless.

In fact, time is paused between us. He silently breathes, each heaving exhale spurting more blood from his open chest wound which he seems to have disregarded as unimportant. He hums absentmindedly and wipes a dirty foot on the floor, leaving a trail of blood.

"What do they call you?" he intones, sounding intrigued.

I don't hesitate, though my still sickened stomach twists violently. "Synthia."

His lips curl like scorched edges of a blackened, burning page, and the smell of death wraps me in an aching embrace. My dark blood leisurely dries on the wall behind him.

"They call me Titchy Gren."


	8. Chapter 8

I can't tear my frolicking mind away from the hair tickling my jaw. Wisps of transient phantoms appear and fade around us, different people from different worlds and different times coming and going from a different Titchy Gren; close enough in the fissure of time to become apparent to us, though never close enough to touch. I swear I saw the shape of Seamus' form in at least ten different apparitions. Eleven. Twelve.

I am standing before him more out of respect than necessity. Respect from what, I do not know. Because he is a powerful figurehead with an entire covenant and cult under his bloody wing, because he was an admirable opponent for someone double his size, because he showed me an inch of mercy. Because he said he liked me. The blood spilled from our confrontation is dry on the wall behind him, adding to the foul smell of rotting fluids in the room.

He watches me from behind his hood, and I watch him from behind the oppressive, stagnant air heated by the bonfire. His hands quiver, and I suspect he aches to cut something again.

"Who is he to you?"

A thought-provoking question, though coincidentally, one I have not given much thought to. He's not a friend; he never was anything close to that. He is not exactly an enemy either. Images and memories of us, the three of us, huddling together in a poisonous land and suckling sunlight through a single hole in a rock bloom in my mind. Images of Gregory's kind, accepting face and a young man's dagger piercing his back overpower them.

"It's complicated."

I am awarded a honey-tinged, blood-curdling smile.

"Sometimes the blood of those we're closest to is the sweetest."

'We're not close' is what I wish to say, but don't because I know it's a lie. I want to be close to him. I want to be as close as he was when he pushed me against the wall of the Cardinal Tower and bled control over me. I want to be close enough to slit his throat and drag his dying body back to the Sunlight Altar and shove his smug face into Gregory's decaying one. Though, I wonder what kind Gregory would think of such a fate for his darling "son". The torment of my mind tearing itself apart in indecision leaves an unbearable soreness in my organs.

"Things are not so black and white," I say with a confidence I don't possess.

"They don't have to be black or white," my acquaintance murmurs, in that odd, uncaring tone of his. "They could be red. You want them to be red. You want to drench yourself in his blood, don't you?"

He leans towards me and tilts his head up just so, and candlelight catches the pale skin of what little is exposed of his face. People whisper tales of the treacherous power the Blood servants wield, tales that express their undeniable prowess as warriors and opponents. They speak of how servants don't hesitate to tear their brethren to shreds like a pack of wild dogs in their arena. They tell of the dirtiest, sneakiest, most immoral techniques of fighting they possess: taking sips from their Estus flask in the midst of battle, assuming the forms of inanimate objects that lay in wait for their enemies to turn and serve their backs on a silver platter, cornering their foe and staggering their defenseless body with an onslaught of arrows and projectiles. The idea of it reeks of glorious victory over those weaker than you, but gutless victory is not something I am seeking.

This servant of Blood is enticing me with promises of such victory, with images of bathing in my enemy's blood while they are helpless at my domination. I could wield that power in my eager hands. I could learn to fight as Seamus fights, blood-thirsty and gluttonous. Unstoppable. The thought is electrifying and almost too much to withstand.

"No," I decide, thinking of the blue beacon around the sword on my back. "I can't join your covenant."

A candle at his side flickers from pooling wax, and he inclines his head to shade his face from my view. "Tch. What a shame. You would have had so much potential." How humorous that I heard the equally condescending Targray say the exact same thing to me almost word for word. These opposing covenants are not so different from one another as they would like to believe, both leaders enchanting and aggravatingly remote. "You'd better go back home now. This is no place for you."

"No, this is a place for me," I clarify with a sharp tongue, raising a boot and stomping it down closer to him in a bold declaration of resistance. I in no way wish a repeat of our earlier dispute, but I will not back down in the face of discouragement. Not when I can hear his heavy accent looming so close to my back. "You will tell me whether you saw him or not!"

Distant laughter echoes through the chamber, startling me and challenging my heart to a race. My lungs collapse in a singular moment of apprehension and possibilities, punctured by what sounds like the laughter of a man, gliding up the stairs from the room below. Titchy Gren says something to me in his odd, articulated voice but my feet are already moving, and I'm turning and sprinting down the stone steps three at a time. My shoulder slams against the wall before I can angle my momentum around the corner, the metal of my sword scraping against the wall in my carelessness, but I shove off from the stone and skid into the circular chamber of skeleton bones and decaying steel. Two figures are in the distance, rounding the bend of the room and growing smaller with each second I stand still, frozen in place by emotions and fear. I open my mouth and bite my tongue and grit my teeth and turn to look behind me before I order my feet to move in a slow jog behind them.

I'm nervous and embarrassed. How did I travel all the way to where I am standing now? I forsook the arts of Pharros and the forgotten, exiled rodents, but the reason for it all floats obscure behind a fog wall. I am just as small, forgotten and exiled, hiding in shadows and peering from corners. Now I stand behind the eye of a storm, a man I once found that wronged me and someone I cared about. Just some man. Just some Undead man. An Undead man defeated another Undead man in combat, and now here I stand.

What if I'm just being a fool? What if it's not even him? What if it is him, what then, what do I expect to do? Slap his cheek and tell him he's a bad person? He's a Blood servant now, he's moved on, and I haven't. Why can't I just move on with my life? Gods, I am a fool! I'm not even a Blue Knight anymore, I'm just some girl obsessing over a man. But if I gave up now, if I am not some girl obsessing over some man... What would I be? What is left? What does any of this vengeance even matter on a larger scale of life? This doesn't even matter, does it?!

_There was a rising sun on the horizon, coloring the entire sky. There were other people as well. All kinds of people, just standing by, watching the sun rise. We were all... just, together. Do you understand?_

_The world is_

_We were together._

_I believe it can be a reality._

_The world is not_

_One can dream._

_If you need somewhere to stay, you could stay here._

_**The world is not a good place.**_

The unmistakable back of his figure is indented in my soul. The dagger at his side, and the sword on his back. When he turns, I don't see him as he appears in my mind's eye, but what this dim light presents him as: a young man with disheveled, brown hair and handsome features, with dark armor, blood-stained weapons, and a scowling face that is twisting in recognition, confusion, horror, anger, disbelief, revulsion, and countless volatile emotions.

The distance between us could be closed with a few short steps. His lips are moving, but his eyes grab the words from the air and steal them away, trapping them with me in a soundless, timeless space. I can feel the bones in my hands rattle, and my line of sight narrows to a thin point. Someone smashes a bell at my feet and it breaks the silence, ringing deafeningly loud, bouncing around the curved walls, and pulsing back into my ears over and over and over and-

"-is this?"

I look into Seamus' face, and I see my demise.

"You killed him."

The fact that I've said words fails to occur to me until I watch his mouth smirk and his elbow nudge his companion hard in the side. I glance to his companion for the first time and immediately wish I hadn't. We stand eye to eye. He is a heavier, young man, with short, light hair, and he's looking at me with wild eyes. Two on one.

Someone breaks another bell behind me, and it makes my heart jump.

"-some dirty rat I found once. Before I came 'ere. The filthy thing must have-"

"You killed him," I say again, and this time the words I say are under my control. He turns his gaze from his friend to me, and now he looks less amused.

"Shut your mouth. What you been doin'? Followin' me, lil' rat?"

His thick-as-blood accent seeps into my pores, and I remember how much I abhorred him.

"You killed Gregory."

I can see pain cut him deep by the way his flapping lips slam shut and his jaw bones work beneath his skin. There is the cold taste of blood in my mouth from a wound on my lip I gashed with my teeth.

"He's dead. He hollowed and died. He's not coming back. And it's your fault."

Twisted delight floods me at the shock and anguish that permeate from him as he absorbs my words. Pride and victory and the ecstasy that comes along with it. I have waited so long. It was all worth it. In this one moment, it all matters.

His boor of a friend points an extravagant crossbow at me with what appear to be three bolts cocked on it and ready to fire. He jostles the thing in his hand as if to show it off, to draw my attention to it and intimidate me. I can see myself snapping that wooden toy under my boot. "Hey. Why don't you back off?" His voice is irritating. He's nothing but a barrier between me and Seamus' corpse.

A flick of my wrist embeds a poison knife into his kneecap.

He yelps like a pup as he is sent to the ground to kneel on his poisoned limb, but he kept his eyes locked on me and, when he regains his balance, he aims the crossbow again. A smart roll forward evades the first and second bolts, but I get too close to him and the third one nails into my left shoulder. The dull pain doesn't stop me from slamming into his body with my weight and knocking him onto his back.

I'm on my feet before he is, but Seamus grabs me by the arm of my wounded shoulder and yanks me from my target. His hands are empty - he hasn't unsheathed a weapon yet - and his eyes are still cloudy, unfocused and distant, but he's lucid enough to speak.

"Stop it. That old knight's not dead."

My mouth is beyond forming words. I snarl and reach my free hand back, grasping the handle of my sword and bringing it down hard, hoping its blade carves his smooth face. The other one, now on his feet, rushes at me from the left and swings his sword into my side, breaking my attack and giving Seamus enough time to preserve his life and duck away. My armor takes the brunt of the blow, but I can still feel the sharp edge of his blade penetrate my flesh.

I'm quick enough to parry his following attack, but I dance away soon after. My mind is racing, tracing paths and suggesting strategies, trying to calculate the best way of fighting the pair at once. With poison coursing through the fat one's veins, odds are stacked in my favor.

"He can't be dead..." Seamus is murmuring to himself, and it's distracting.

A quick dive into the front pouch of my satchel and my last throwing knife is flung into his chest. It is the last projectile I have in my arsenal, and a part of me scolds myself for not saving it.

I don't have time to gauge Seamus' reaction, because I hear the click of a crossbow at my back and drop to the floor in a messy roll. A bolt catches me in the thigh, but I lunge on my good leg and swipe at the pig with my sword in both hands. The blade slices through his defenses like paper, and I get three attacks in before he manages to block one and back away. I can see his face starting to dampen and his eyes squint like he's having trouble seeing: all side effects of the poison. It shouldn't be too long now.

He fumbles with his crossbow, frantically trying to reload it, and I rush at him to interrupt his actions, pushing the pain in my leg and shoulder to the back of my mind. Something slices at my back and hinders my progress, allowing the fiend to reload, but by the time he fires, I'm already rolling and manage to evade all his shots. When I bounce to my feet, I see Seamus, dark-eyed and seething, with a dagger in his hand. He tried to stab me in the back. He tried to slip his dagger into my back like he did Gregory. I see red.

Reeling my right arm back, my uninjured arm, my strongest arm, I lock onto his companion with my eyes and hurl my sword like a spear. The scimitar follows its assigned path and, though its curved nature causes unbalance, it propels through the air with ease, the blue cloth flowing almost gracefully behind it, and impales its mark. He is driven back by the impact, stumbling, cursing, and grappling at the hilt with eyes wide in panic. I see Seamus rushing towards him, but he is far too late. His friend's body fades, and though I will never know whether it was the poison or the sword that did him in, I take great pleasure in watching his body turn to mist, releasing my sword to clatter to the ground. He will be whisked back to the last bonfire he rested at, but I don't worry about whether that bonfire is close or not. This will all be over soon.

Seamus has pulled the Estus flask from his belt and is taking a long drink from it. Fool. In his indulgence, he gives me just enough time to roll forward, retrieve my sword, and get a hit in before he can dodge.

He growls and screeches to me that Gregory's not dead, he can't be dead, but, if he is, then it's his own fault for being so blind, weak, and stupid.

At this point, I can no longer feel the weight of my sword in my hand. I must have dropped it or thrown it or done something else with it, but I am on top of Seamus and my hands are around his throat. I don't remember tackling him or even making my way over to him at all. All I know is that I must squeeze with all the strength I can muster, as hard as I can. Something nips at me, right between my shoulder blades, and I take one hand away from his throat to pry his tense arm down. The blood on the dagger in his hand is almost as red as his face. He is weak with the oxygen I've deprived him of, and the dagger comes along easily from his feeble grasp. I clench it with both of my hands, raise my arms above my head, and slam the blade down hard.

Thousands of bells rain from the ceiling. There is a hand groping at my face, my throat, my breasts. It grabs my short hair and pulls. With a sharp whine, I tear myself away from it, rolling onto my back to lay on the cold, hard stone. Now beyond reach of the scraping hand, I take deep, heavy breaths with my eyes closed and revel in the darkness. My leg hurts when I try to lay it flat against the stone, so I don't. I just fill up my lungs and stare into the nothingness behind my eyelids.

* * *

Groaning arrests my ears, and when I reject the darkness by opening my eyes, I turn my head and see him curled up tight beside me, small and still as a mouse. A bloody dagger lies between us.

My surroundings are hard to register. I try to sit up, but am hindered by the end of the iron bolt in my leg stabbing at my chest when I lean forward. Wrenching it out is an unnerving, painful process, but when it is done, I place the bolt next to the dagger and push myself into a sitting position. I look to my left again to see that he has rolled over and is facing me. Both of his hands are pressed against his face, with blood seeping between his fingers and running down his neck. It soaks into his hair from the puddle his head is laying in. There is a constant noise coming from him, a raw, muffled, wailing noise, and the only time it ceases is when he pauses to gasp in wet, choking breaths.

It is difficult to discern my emotions. I just sit and watch as he rolls onto his front and struggles up on one elbow to let the collection of blood drain through his fingers and puddle on the floor. Slowly, gradually, creeping like a stalking creature in the dark, a painful feeling crawls into my chest and dies, and from its corpse spawns hundreds of other painful feelings infinitely more strong. Some of the pain claws up from my chest and makes a nest in my throat, settling down to block my airway.

For a reason unknown to me, I remember something that happened long ago. I start to think of the time when we were summoned to the same world as sun phantoms, and he slapped me on the back. He hit me right on the back. I dreadfully want to push that memory into an abyss and erase it from my mind forever, but it is flaunting itself in front of me with the mass of a Giant. He slapped me on the back when my hand was shaking at the fog wall. He hit me on the back. I feel absolutely sick in every inch of my body.

I get over on my hands and knees and bend my head down to get a closer look at his bleeding face. When I reach to peel his fingers away, he doesn't resist, but allows two of his fingers to be hooked and his hand to be taken into mine to unmask part of his features. What I manage to uncover is enough.

Beneath all the blood and gore he's been holding against his face with his own hands, there is a jagged, seeping, red slit where his left eye once was. It stares at me from his wavering skull and weeps dark fluids down his cheek.

I am only capable of watching when he jerks his hand out of mine and starts to rub blindly at the stone wall beside him, fumbling with one hand still pressed at his face. He doesn't stand so much as he drapes himself against the supporting stone in a dazed slouch before his hand goes to work at rubbing his uninjured eye with careful, circular motions.

I want to tell him that's not going to help, that he's just smearing blood around. I want to take him and guide him to the nearest bonfire, if only to escape the sight of him, slumping there and trying to see. I remember how dearly I had wanted to make him pay, how much I wanted to hurt him for being the person he was, selfish, uncaring, and violent, but I look up at him now from down on the ground and I don't know what to think anymore.

Curses bubble from his mouth as he lifts his foot in a shaky step, then stops suddenly, groping at the wall. I leap to my feet, surprising myself with how quick my tired body moves, and hover near. My hands flutter like flies around him, shy of making contact, though they dart to clutch at my chest when he coughs and spits blood that lands in a glob on the tip of my boot. I glance down to the fluids briefly before peering at his covered face again.

"Go... Go to the bonfire..." It's a whisper, so light I doubt even my tongue noticed I'd said anything, though it travels far in this silent chamber.

His face is exposed when his hand darts out and swipes in my direction, skimming along my face with bloody fingers. I make an indignant noise of fear and jump back.

"You... bitch!"

My body flinches as if from a slap, and pain erupts from my soul. It hurts more than any of the physical wounds I possess; it takes my wounds, rips them open, and carves the nerves out.

"I can't... You came all the way here... to tell me that- that-" Words spew from him in short, hard bursts. He can barely catch his breath, and his accent is almost nonexistent. He sounds like a different person. He sounds like a little boy. "And then... you do this. You think I wanted him to die, huh?! You think I wanted-" His voice breaks as it's volume increases, and my hands clutch tighter at my chest. "I just wanted to show him! That... that I..." Something like a coughing sob gurgles from his throat. I can see tears mixing with the blood on his face. "He was the only person that ever..." His voice dies away as his body sinks to the ground to sit messily on his bottom with a gentle, defeated thud.

I have done it. I have defeated the great and evil Seamus. The man who hounded my thoughts of vengeance and was my motivation to grow stronger in the arts of combat in hopes of one day avenging the fall of Gregory. Seamus has fallen, Gregory is avenged, and I can feel my soul trying to eat its way out of my body.

I stand still, staring at his bloody hand prints on the wall, for a very long time. I am vaguely aware of Seamus using what remains in his Estus flask to rinse the gore from his face. When my feet do come to life, they stagger over to my forgotten sword. Seamus' back is unmarred, though unprotected in his haste to get the blood off his skin. He refuses to go to a bonfire, and I feel obligated to do something about it. I balance my sword in one hand and take use of the wall for support.

It slips around his face easily enough because I suspect he catches a glimpse of it with his good eye and is stunned in recognition. There is no protest from him, but he does not offer any assistance either, by tilting his head or using his hands. He just sits, still and silent, and lets me tie the blue cloth around his head to cover his wounded eye.

I am on my knees, lingering at his back, and I am intimately close to him; close enough to enforce control, to slit his throat, to drag his body to the Sunlight Altar. Instead, my lips part.

"He was the only person that ever really seemed to care for me, too."

He does not respond. Though, his hands reach back to pull at the tattered ends of the strip of cloth and tighten it more securely around his head.


	9. Chapter 9

"Gregory knew more about it than I do... Even thinkin' about it now, it rubs me the wrong way. I told him about it, this feeling I've always had. I don't know why, but I just never really... belonged anywhere. No, don't give me that look. It's so much more than that. Don't you see them everywhere? The man you killed, my friend, if I could even call him that... I saw him when I first got here, standin' against a wall and trying to look tough, but he- the look about him. He stood tall and proud, like he was meant to be here, like it was at the very core of his existence to be here, like the Gods had told him themselves.

"I know you've seen 'em. Gregory thought he was one of 'em, but I could just look at him and tell it was otherwise. It's always easy to tell. Lookin' so lost and impulsive. Like you were. I must have looked like that when he first found me, and he was probably just the same, but I was so... blind back then! I don't know how long we stayed together; it doesn't really matter anyway, but I never once did a damn thing about it. We never even talked about it. He tried to teach me to find purpose in the Sun, followin' the beliefs of some old, brave Sun Warrior that had long since lost his mind and died. Ha! So ridiculous... By the way he described it, that old Sun Warrior didn't have a purpose either, roaming the lands and lookin' for something he desperately wanted that was beyond his grasp. He didn't have any purpose, and he knew it and eventually lost his damn mind. Gregory knew it more than I did, but we never spoke a word of it. Too afraid, I suppose. Afraid of facing the truth? You're not suppose to just wander in this world, don't you understand, you stupid rat? Everything that has ever been and ever will be, has had and will have a purpose! And if you don't, then... maybe losing your mind was your purpose all along. I've seen enough people to know this for certain.

"I guess the only reason I did him in was to find one. I never wanted that old bastard to die... But Blood servants are suppose to be ruthless and bloodthirsty... I thought this might be where I belonged. That I would finally get that look in my eye that every other bloody person in this world has if I let go of my morals and took the sign of Blood. But you just had to come and ruin it, huh? Maybe the fact that you're even here at all means it wasn't meant to be. Though, you've impressed me. If it was you that did that to him, I would have chased you to the edge of the Abyss without question to avenge him, and here you are. I don't regret what I've done. Everything that happens means it was meant to happen, yeah? So there's no going back. I'm not going to honor that old idiot's name by goin' back to the Heirs, and I'm not going to reverse any of this by goin' to a bonfire. Oh, don't look so surprised. A crooked backstabber takin' the consequences of his actions seriously? You don't know a damn thing about me, so it's not wise to make any assumptions, lil' girl."

There is a lull of noise in which I absorb his vomited speech and consider his observations on life in this dreadful land.

"You said you wanted to show him something."

The way he stares at me with impatience in his eye as if waiting for me to speak as he pauses and thinks about his answer baffles me. "...Yeah."

Brilliant. He turns away from me suddenly, and my mind captures it in a magnificent flourish, the ends of cloth flowing like blue wisps of starlight in his wake. He looks dangerous and powerful without the eye I've taken from him. "Wait," I blurt out, in desperation. It rings through our dark, looming, circular residence. "I know what... I feel like-"

"I know you do, idiot. I just told you I saw it in you, too." His hair is bunched up behind the cloth, I notice, pieces of it sticking out at odd angles. "You're lost as a poor, fallen baby bird. Why the hell else would you be here? You're no Blood servant."

"I didn't even join the Blood servants," I tell him with an even tone, pushing his childish insults away like swatting gnats. My body feels drained and confused. I'm not entirely sure how we ended up here, how he's not dead, how I'm not leaving. I ache wildly for a bonfire. "I came here to kill you and I failed."

He turns back and, again, I am accosted by poisonous starlight. "Kill me then." His voice tickles me with the empty taunt, but I've had enough of pointless vengeance. I have the feeling we both know I couldn't do it even if I wanted to.

I look into the one dark void he has left and speak without a filter. "Do you want to know something? I can't remember why I joined the Rats. I just can't. There was no reason, I'm sure. It just happened one day, because I had nothing else to do. I can scarcely remember what I occupied the time with before I came upon them. Perhaps I wandered. Or perhaps I squatted. I'm sure you can't remember what you did either. Nor Gregory, were he still alive. Maybe not even his son, in fact. I don't know, but does it matter? I am here now, in front of you, and what carried me here if not my purpose? Why did I meet you and share this ridiculous fate with you if it were not our purpose?"

He bristles like an injured cat, his shoulders hunching forth and his eyebrow lowering. I fear for a moment that he will turn and walk from me, but instead he leans forward. "You don't understand shit," he growls, "if you don't know what I mean by purpose. Just face it already. You don't know what you're doin' here, you don't know what you're doin' with anything in your life, and I don't care if you tell me that you do, because you don't! You wouldn't even be questionin' yourself or your choices, if you had a true purpose, you stupid wench!"

His hands rise like he's going to push me, but he just spins on his heel and takes a few steps away before leaning against the cold stone wall with his back to me. The anger that brewed in me when we were "team mates" and he was equally insufferable reintroduces itself to me like a sword through the chest. I can't believe I almost brought myself to pity him. I'm not ignorant to his point, though. If there were one intelligent thing that ever spewed from his mind it's that we are one incredible pair of witless outcasts. I've felt surrounded by those who belonged to something in this world and wondered why I didn't really feel the same. Even my insane friend seemed to be engulfed by the threads of fate, nothing like the way I have wandered to and fro, flitting about as my fickle heart desired. The Rat Covenant was a tiny paradise, deceiving me into security and comfort for so long. I put my absolute, unbreakable trust in him, only to be whisked away by a destiny that I feel now has no meaning.

"I do understand..." I manage to get out. Some of my anger bleeds into my voice and it annoys me. "It's just a little hard to talk about, okay? You don't have to be rude about it."

When he neither responds nor moves, I swivel on my feet and am jogging up the stairs to the bonfire. I feel the small demon's eyes trace my body to the flames and sure enough they meet mine when I rise from the fire and look to him.

His mouth forms a tiny frown. "Aw... You hardly had blood anywhere on you."

I don't intend to linger long within his oppressive domain. "I'm not made out for your covenant. I'm sorry."

As I rush to descend the stairs, a heavy giggle pushes me to move faster. "You'll be back."

Seamus is still where I left him, though he's moved further away as if creeping along the wall like a snail. I sigh involuntarily at the sight and walk up to him, hooking my arm with his and pulling. He recoils immediately. "Stop it."

"Come with me," I offer, grabbing his evasive limb again and attempting to lead him along. This time, surprisingly, he does come, though he trudges at a slow pace and forces me to linger in front of his every step like a mother leading her disobedient son.

"Where are we goin'?" he mumbles, filling his role of the disobedient child with stunning accuracy.

"To look for answers."

* * *

The monotony is a less than welcome sight in the midst of the chaos that seems to have consumed my life. The green woman stands perpetually in her place and the blacksmith hammers away at some metal and the man with no purpose sits upon his rock and looks down on it all. My friend doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight. Seamus has long since detached himself from me and settles down on a rock by the fire to take in its warmth. I notice that he does not kneel.

The journey up the stairs isn't as daunting as it always seemed to me when I happened to glance at the structure. The man doesn't even lift his head from his clasped hands when I draw near. It is only when I stand still before him that he opens his mouth and intones.

"You're Undead, aren't you? You have that smell of irreversible fate..." He carries neither a sword nor a shield, nor any kind of weapon it seems, though his armor is shiny and clean. The sun behind him glints off the steel of his shoulder and nearly blinds me. "You probably heard that it was possible to break the curse."

I shake my head slightly at his quick assumptions that spread like wildfire through my mind. Break the curse... Could one truly break the curse? "No," I say with a very soft voice. "I mean, I am Undead, but I have no goal of breaking the curse. I simply wanted to ask you something." I wonder if he greets all people in this manner, like he's hoping that someone, anyone, will say yes.

"Ah. My apologies. That was that other young man, wasn't it...?"

He trails off and, when I wait for him to continue, I am left waiting for a while. The exchange is beyond awkward, though maybe it's my own nervous mind sculpting it in that way. "My name is Synthia," I tell him, delicately like he makes himself out to be. "I was hoping that you could chat with me for a while. We seem to be in a similar state." Untrue, of course, but this man doesn't need to know that.

He shifts a bit and peers up at me to scrutinize. I make my mouth curve in a small, welcoming smile that I pray doesn't look odd. "I am Saulden. If we are truly similar, then, like you, I have lost everything." My smile slips away infinitely easier than it was first summoned. "It will happen to everyone, you know. People come here to find hope... but they will all end up the same way."

My tone is no longer softened and sweetened for this lost soul. I hold more respect for him than I do pity, I realize. "But why?"

"Well, if you ask me," he starts after a brief pause, tilting his head down again, perhaps in sorrow, perhaps in thought, "it has to do with the curse. Although, the curse is tied to the soul, which is said to be the source of all life. So, really, it has to do with life. To _live_. That's the real curse, right there."

I look away from him as his infectious words crawl into my mind and make themselves a reality. I am sick in the base of my throat and feel like I'm suddenly falling into some terrible pit he created beneath my feet while I wasn't looking. My eyes are summoned by the brilliant sun on the close horizon, and I try to see the beauty that Gregory once did, but all I recognize is a fiery ball with the capability of burning us all alive.

"We all came here for a reason though, right?" My frantic words drift up into my ears like someone else is speaking them. "Drangleic called us all here for a reason. Why else would we come to this cursed land? There must have been a reason."

He chuckles, very slow and low in his throat. Completely humorless. "Oh, that's not true at all. There's nothing here for you, me, or anybody. I use to travel, like you. But I learned the truth soon enough." I look into his eyes and see budding insanity that covers itself with a cloak of intelligence. "You'll learn it soon, too."

"Learn what?" I insist, though different parts of me both wish and do not wish to know.

He moves his arms down to rest his hands on his knees and levels his gaze with mine. "There is no cure for it. Not attainable to us, anyway."

I have no response. "People make all the wrong assumptions," he continues. "Light and Dark... They are both equally as horrible. The Age of Fire, or of Dark. What does it even matter? Things are never that black and white. It fuels the Darksign all the same, in the end. The Age of Nothingness would suit us all a lot better."

I suddenly feel like dropping to my knees and sobbing before him. "How do you know this?" I whisper.

His eyes burn with the infinite wisdom and burden of the Curse. "Maybe in a dream. Maybe when I thought that I could do something about it. What a fool's notion..."

I swear I see time convulse itself right before my eyes, dark and light matter swirling in the endless space of the terrible thing we call existence, and Saulden flickers like a flame butterfly within a dark cavern. His mouth is moving when he settles before me in a matching expanse of time, his voice soft and hopeless.

"-give up soon. Like I have. It's only a matter of time."

His despairing eyes hold my gaze for as long as I can bear, until I mumble out something akin to "thank you for your time" and scurry down the steps.

Seamus has not moved, but leans back on his hands now, looking straight up at the sky. I rush to him like he is my salvation, scooting onto a bumpy rock beside him and begin whispering in harsh tones.

"You were wrong! They're not different than us in any divine, celestial way! It's not that they have a purpose and we don't! They're not going... They're not...!"

The muscles beneath his eye twitch as his face slides easily into a glare. "Don't you see?!" I plead, hysterical with fear and budding insanity. "I can't remember why I joined the Rats! I _can't remember_! When I killed your friend, the one you say looked like he knew his purpose, he never came back. He wasn't Undead, was he?" I get no reply. "If you feel as if you don't have a purpose, what are you? Hopeless! And if you are Undead and hopeless..."

His face assumes a pristine condition that I have not seen in a long, long while, all of his hatred and violent emotions fully quelled and pacified. Defeated. "We're going hollow."


	10. Chapter 10

In this moment we must appear as insane as my good friend, hunched side-by-side with shoulders pressed tight together and whispering in loud voices, like we are messily swapping world-shattering secrets.

"It's not the fact that you have no purpose. It's the_ belief _that you have no purpose. It's _thinking_ that you have no purpose. That's the problem! Gregory did not die because you killed him. He could have easily knelt by the bonfire and used the effigy I gave him. He died because he believed that he had no purpose for living any longer!"

Seamus is more quiet than I've ever seen him, staring hard at the ground like he expects it to open up and reveal all the answers of life and death to him. "Where did this all come from?"

"I wasn't talking to that man up there to hear his opinion on things. I was talking to him to hear how he spoke about them. When he went on about how things don't matter and how we will all learn the truth eventually and how we should give up, it occurred to me. That man up there does have a purpose; everyone in life has a purpose! But by his way of thinking, he doesn't, thus making him closer to the curse."

Seamus shakes his head in a slow, confused stupor. "...I don't understand."

"It's all mental! It's all about the way you think. Hollowing is a mental process just as much as it is a physical one, if not more so! We both were lost and thought we didn't really have a goal, but this way of thinking only furthered us from having one. You said it yourself! If I'm questioning my goal and my choices, it weakens them, makes them seem insignificant. That is hollowing. That is what is happening to me; to us, from what you explained to me earlier. When you lose your way on the path of life; that is the catalyst for hollowing.

"I was with the Rats but I left them because I was convinced it wasn't my true purpose. Then, after everything that happened, I joined the Knights of the Blue-"

A disturbed, disgusted look appears on Seamus' handsome face. "_The Knights of the Blue_?"

I don't even bother rolling my eyes. "I joined the Knights of the Blue, but ended up leaving them as well, because once again, I was coerced into thinking that wasn't what I was meant to do either. How could I have been so stupid! I was hollowing ever since I left the Rats. And when I finally caught up with you, I let you live. After all that time, thinking I was meant to kill you and making it my goal, I thought to myself if you died, what would I have left to chase? I had made you my purpose for living. I don't know... This is barely making sense anymore, even to myself."

The disgusted look has increased tenfold. "That last bit sounded grossly romantic..."

"Shut up. I know you understand it, too. There's a reason people aren't suppose to wander in this land. It's a good way to drive yourself into the depths of hopelessness. It's rumored that even Pharros fell victim."

Seamus reaches back to pull at one end of his bandage, smoothing along its softness and yanking at it, and I suspect he has developed a new nervous habit. From this close to him, I can see the individual hairs of the short stubble on his chin as he opens his mouth. "Look, I don't know about you, but there's one thing I already know about my fate and it's that I'm meant to be a great and feared warrior."

All at once I want to scream in frustration and yank the bandage from around his head and punch him in his missing eye for being so incredibly daft to the gravity of our situation. Of course he is only thinking of himself. I've got to stop believing I can confide in him absolutely because every time I have, he has gone to amazing lengths to prove me wrong.

Mist laps at the edge of the bonfire in front of us and assumes the form of a man's tall frame; one whose frame I immediately recognize to be my friend's. I don't even have to look at Seamus to know that his hand has found its way to his sword and that he's bristling with weariness.

When my friend has straightened himself and taken in his surroundings, brushing off the lingering air of ash and flames, he is the first to speak, and quite loudly at that. He spreads his arms like he wishes me to stand up and embrace him. "Hey! You're back here! I guess I talked to you enough that you decided to stay in Majula. Nice."

I find myself standing up to greet him, but not accepting his offer of a hug. He barely seems to take note of my rejection though, as his arms drop easily to his sides and a smile remains on his face. "Hello again," I greet. " It's nice to see you here as well. I'm not staying in Majula, only visiting."

He nods as he looks down to dig around in the bag at his waist, though when he glances back up, he looks directly at Seamus. "Who are-"

With a quick side step, I position myself between the two men, if only because I foresee Seamus replying with something aggravating, and although I don't question the patience and kindness of my friend, Seamus has an impeccable talent for igniting confrontation.

"He's a friend of mine," I blurt out. Surprisingly, Seamus doesn't make a peep behind me.

A gentle smile from my friend's kind face warms my fears of him pressing further. "Ah. Cool." He's wearing a new chest-piece, I notice; a red cape no longer licks at his back. "You changed your hairstyle."

Interesting that we seemed to notice new things about each other simultaneously. The painful self-consciousness that I first felt when locks of hair drifted away from my neck and onto the floor of Titchy Gren's blood-chamber collides inside my stomach with the force of a storm, and I'm not entirely sure why. "No. Well. Yes. I mean, it wasn't really- Yes, I did."

The laughter that spills out of his mouth sounds like pure, trickling water. "Yeah, yeah. That's really cool, though. I wish I could do that. Short hair looks good on you."

I stare at his hands for favor of looking at his face. "Oh. It used to be much longer."

"Man," he sighs, "if only there was an option in this game..." Before my mind can start to work on dissecting what exactly he meant by those words of insanity, he is turning his hand over and dropping something to the ground at my feet.

It is a bundle of something tied up in a little, dirty, red pouch, and I bend over to scoop it up and see about ten small, red rocks have been stuffed inside. "Um."

"Red eye orbs," he says, "for your new covenant. I know I didn't have to, but I had a few extra and thought of you."

I really do not know what to say. "Thank you," are the words that I find tumbling from my stunned mouth. I don't let him know that I didn't join the Brotherhood. I just pocket the orbs and settle into a staring contest with a dent in his armor.

"Yup. Don't worry about it. Anyway, I should get going."

"Okay," I say. When his feet threaten to carry him away in the direction of the woman in green, wild impulse swoops upon me and I take a step towards him. "Wait. What is your name?"

The sight of his smile as he angles his head to look at me over his shoulder distracts me from something that flits by at the corner of my vision. "My real name?"

"Yes," I confirm, bidding his honesty. "Not an alias."

His body leans closer to me as he rocks his weight back on his heels with a smile on his lips and whispers light as a fading soul. "Jonathan."

As the ground carries him away from me and leaves me with the warm gift of his voice and fiery life in my breast, I whisper his name to taste it on my tongue and it turns my saliva saccharine.

Seamus is gone when I pivot to look behind me, which is not surprising, but throws me into an indescribably weird panic of what can only be similar to a mother losing sight of her child. I turn in foolish circles as my eyes survey my surroundings and finally spot two figures up by the stone monument, where the man with no hope resides. They are both standing.

Seamus is the one with his back to me, but I know he knows I'm there even as I slide like a snake up the stairs behind him.

"-not a matter of life or death. It's a matter of suffering or suffering perpetually."

Saulden's eerie voice is preaching infinite wisdom again, it seems. For such a crestfallen man, every word he says seems to burrow itself into my being, and I covet it like a precious metal. The way he speaks of things is otherworldly, like he's lived in this land for thousands of years. Perhaps he has.

"There is only one thing that could help you, that could help us all, and that thing does not exist. Many men believe they know just the thing. I've seen so many men set off on incredible journeys, but in their travels, they all lose themselves to the truth eventually. They all end up feeding the curse, in the end; exactly the thing they fought to avoid..."

I wonder how Seamus has summoned the patience to listen to these wise yet honestly taxing ramblings. "Right, first of all, shut up."

Ah. He hasn't.

"Second of all," he continues, "I'm not askin' you about the cure, alright? I'm askin' you what you know about hollowing."

Saulden is silent and contemplative, as if Seamus' stupidity has rolled off his back like rainwater. I envy him. "I know plenty of it. I know it is coming for you, as it is for me... Inescapable, though if you think yourself brave enough to make a difference, the souls of four Giant beings are within your reach. When the young man fails, it'll be a miracle if you succeed. Unbelievable, really. But putting faith in the Blue Sentinels can go a long way..."

His words are a twisted maze of prophet-spoken destiny. I can almost hear Seamus' mind scrambling to make sense of them. "The Blue Sentinels..?"

Saulden's eyes meet mine before he continues. "The Way of the Blue. Or 'of the Meek', some say. When death comes knocking for them, they'll wish they thought otherwise. When you face danger, the Blue Sentinels will come to your aid. Protection is yours, if you wish..."

Seamus looks insulted by the mere thought of such a thing. "And you're sayin' this'll all help? That findin' these four souls will somehow help with hollowing?"

"It's an impossible journey," Saulden sighs out. "Impossible journeys are always a good treatment for hollowing. Temporary, of course, but who's to say you shouldn't try while you've still got your wits about you. Although, what do I know..."

While Seamus nods in thought, Saulden takes a breath and speaks on. "We all have a place in this world... that much is certain. Who's to say who goes where and who does what? Although, if you ask me, I don't think a pact with the Blue will be any good for you at all. No, not a man like you... In fact, just the opposite will do wonders."

He describes to Seamus that upon a ledge along the cliffside there rests a "Victor's Stone" bearing an inscription for those who seek challenge and an arduous path of danger. Such a pact is not for the faint of heart he specifies, though before he can even finish his warnings, Seamus has taken off with long strides to this "Victor's Stone", always a seeker to prove himself a great warrior to those around him. I wonder when he will realize that nobody even doubted his abilities in the first place.

Now that we find ourselves alone, I look Saulden in the eye and tell him I would like to join the Way of the Blue. An impulsive, split-second decision to join the Covenant of the Meek, but the only one here to judge is him, and his eyes are as sympathetic and thoughtful as they ever were. It's strange how different it is being on the other side of this two faction alliance; being the protected instead of the protector. Although its purpose is the opposite, I feel more weak and unsafe than protected when I slide the Blue Seal onto my finger. I feel vulnerable.

When Saulden looks at me with honest eyes and promises me that I made a wise choice, I can't help but ask him if he will come with us.

"I couldn't," he insists with a shake of his head. "I haven't the strength. What help would I be? I've quite grown to like this place, as well. It's lonely here... It suits me just fine."

In juxtaposition to the first time we spoke, I am taken by the desire to drop to my knees before him. "You're going hollow. You said that you know it. Don't you want to do something about it? I know you've tried before, but you could come with me. Try to change your fate with me. You said that you haven't the strength but your wisdom is breathtaking and powerful, and I can tell you are self-aware. Most hollows aren't even aware of what's happening to them until it's too late. I can tell you are special."

The corners of his mouth curl into a tiny smile that looks like it pains him to make. "What a sweet girl you are. I can tell that you, too, are special in some way I can't describe. Though..." His voice drips away as he glances to his right, to the cliffside that carries the Victor's Stone. "Your friend worries me..."

I sigh and tilt my head forward to scuff a boot at the clean stone. "He worries a lot of people..." I mutter. "As much as it pains me to admit, he and I are not so different. He's just as aware; in fact, he caught on before I did."

Saulden gazes at my face the entire time he thinks his decision over, which is unnerving, to say the least, but oddly admirable. "It will make no difference," he says, but he moves further away from his stone seat and adjusts his gauntlets, hinting that I've won him over.

I ask him if he carries a weapon and when he tells me he does, I take his word for it and say nothing else on the matter.

Seamus makes a face of displeasure when he learns of our new companion, which was to be expected, but neither of us cared in the first place.

"Why's it always have to be like this..." he murmurs, as I lead us down to the bonfire, and I know he's thinking of the time he and Gregory took me in as a stranger, but I still can't understand why he doesn't think of things on a larger scale. Some things are just more important.

Saulden turns to me after Seamus has been whisked away by flames and wraps his hand around my arm, boring into my soul with his eyes. "You really shouldn't have done this," he frets. "I have knowledge of the world because I have experienced it. I know what ugly future awaits you. What awaits us all. Trust me, this will not end well..."

"How do we know we can't change it unless we try?" I ask him, and I watch his face fall with the hopelessness and gravity of a boulder being dropped into a endless, dry well.


	11. Chapter 11

I still imagine that the grimy blue cloth flows like liquid starlight across my fingers, but it's hard to fully enjoy the texture of dear Gregory's memento from up on the tips of my toes and hovering inches away from Seamus' disgruntled face. It glides away smooth as slick ice from around his head, allowing my curious fingers to poke and prod at the healthy flesh surrounding his now intact eye, much to his aggravation. The skin around where the large wound once marred his face is no longer puffy and red; no traces of the angry, weeping injury are left behind. Traversing bonfires healed the wound completely, judging from how he blinks fluidly at my face with both of his dark pupils unwavering. The recovery makes me feel a little better about inflicting it upon him in that disturbing fit of violent rage.

However, as I lean back on a heel and begin to neatly fold the cloth for storage, his hand seizes my wrist with an unnecessarily strong vice and the smallest words are murmured. "Put it back."

Our eyes connect, mine blooming with befuddlement and his with something bordering on pleading - though nothing even close, as Seamus would never plead - but I search his face with firm inquiry before we share a space of understanding, and I raise myself on tip-toes again to reach behind his head and secure a knot without question.

When I've saved his messy hairs from getting caught in the knot and positioned the cloth perfectly over his now functioning left eye, I lean back to regard him as he touches his accessory with two fingers and nods, more to himself than to me. "Better." I don't offer a 'you're welcome' because he never said thank you, and I don't even begin to try to understand why he wishes to continue to hinder his vision for no tactical reason. It's obvious that it's all sentimental, so I respect his wishes and choose not to pry. He can continue to wear that thing like a fiendish king and appear the most powerful, dangerous man in the room if he chooses to.

"Synthia."

Saulden is meandering a few feet behind us like he has been the whole way here, just shy of both joining our party and being a party of his own. "Come have a look at this."

The skin-melting heat smoldering up from the pure lava and fire this stronghold rests on enters my lungs when I inhale, giving me the illusion of not receiving enough oxygen, and I'm almost completely winded when I manage to jog over to the thing he's pointing at on the ground.

After exploring the sweltering Iron Keep, we have gone up stairs and maneuvered tight corridors and dropped from platforms, and finally, we find ourselves on a thin ledge before a fog wall. Saulden has said that he knows not if the demon behind the fog is a powerful one or not, nor if it is one of the four we are seeking, but we have scoured many cleared places in this land and gone to many already-lit bonfires, and this is the first great challenge we have been lucky enough to encounter. Jonathan has been making the world his own faster than I anticipated.

I lean over to examine the summon sign that Saulden chose to point out to me and recognize the brilliant glow of a Sunlight Warrior. It makes me wince to look at it, and not only because of the bright light.

I scoot a foot against it and the glow curls up to form the shape of the woman who left it, a sorceress by the looks of her. She could be very useful to us, if we could manage to squeeze her into our overflowing party. Three's a crowd, no doubt, but when it comes to summoning, the world has a tendency to reject any people that push the limits of three. I'm sure nobody knows the reason behind this; it's just another common law of living.

"We could try," I mumble to Saulden, and suddenly Seamus steps forth rudely, nearly pushing me against the stone wall when he shoulders past me.

"What the hell is she talkin' about?" he demands of Saulden, because apparently either I have ceased existing before him or am not worthy of being addressed. I gnaw at my tongue to give my teeth something else to do other than put the cur in his place.

Saulden looks to me with calm eyes that dart to Seamus' face before returning to mine. "We were contemplating over a summon..."

Seamus takes a moment to look at the floor beneath his feet, and I can see his eye graze the entirety of the ledge we are standing on. "...There _are_ no summon signs." He turns in a circle with his eye to the floor and then directs its accusing gaze to me. "Have you gone blind or are you just stupid?"

I think over what would be the smarter option here: to cut off his arms or his legs. Decisions, decisions.

"Ah. Yes," Saulden hums, "I had forgotten to let you know. It's the covenant you are a part of. Summons are not available to you brave, fearless champions."

"Really?" I ask, struck by honest fascination. The inner workings of covenants have always been things of great interest to me.

"Indeed," Saulden continues, "there are many privileges taken away by choosing to follow the path of champions." Seamus looks about as interested as a man watching lava harden to rock. "Summoning for the purpose of cooperation is just one of them that have been discovered. It's baffling to think there could be many more, just waiting to be found; all of them a hindrance, of course. I meant it when I said this covenant was not for the faint of heart..."

"Yeah, yeah," Seamus blurts out, impatiently. He begins pacing, and when his boot brushes the edge of another sign, it quickly fades away as if his presence has been taken over by his covenant and made it vanish from not only his view but ours as well. The only thing I managed to decipher from the sign before it faded were the letters L, U, and C. I speculate about this as the two men go on arguing - that is to say that Seamus is trying to argue and Saulden is too tranquil to have any of it.

"His covenant could have an affect on us as well," I muse, but the two of them have their backs to me, already progressing to the fog wall, so I keep my wandering thoughts to myself and stride over to stand beside them.

Through my thin black leather armor, I can feel someone place their hand flush against my lower back, and I look to my right to search Seamus' smirking face.

"Girls first," he oozes to me in an obvious taunt, dangling the memories of my nervous, failed summoning as a Sunlight Warrior over my head, like a sneering cat dangling cheese in front of a mouse, but I refuse to take the bait and block him from my senses completely, grasping my sword in one hand and pressing the other against the cool mist.

"One day I will watch you die and, believe me, that day will be the greatest day of my life," I vow, as the mist creeps along my arm, welcoming me inside.

Muffled words float through the wall behind me. "Ugh, stop makin' advances towards me. It's so obvious, and I'm not interested."

In. Sufferable.

The circular room on the other side of the fog is remarkably small considering one of the four Beings could be lurking within. In fact, it's size speaks volumes of it's importance, and I know without a doubt that the coming battle will be nothing more than a test of strength as opposed to a grand advancement towards defying destiny.

A towering, fiery demon is standing in the center of the room with his head up, his shoulders back, and a sword that appears to be carved from the hardest metal in his hand. His entire form seems to be made of the same material, actually, the only exception being the core of his abdomen which is spitting flames that lick at the air around him and heat up the room to an uncomfortable, oppressive temperature.

Before I can seize the chance to glance over my shoulder and confirm that the two made it in safely behind me, a roar bellows into the chamber and the fire demon's sword is making it's way towards me at the speed of lightning. I drop into a roll as it skims the air above my head. The opportunity to check on the others has passed now; all of my attention must be focused on the enemy because, as large as it is, it wields its weapon like a man influenced by unspeakable rage, spinning to swipe at me a second time.

I rush into a sprint, charging at its backside and thrusting my sword into its leg, but it barely makes a scratch against the scolding metal and the demon doesn't even flinch. My attacks evoke no reactions from the beast, nor does it hinder in any way his relentless attacks against the others. My blows cause a reverberation through the metal it is made of to the metal of my sword and up its hilt into my arm, possibly hurting me more than my attacks are wounding the demon.

With a quick scan around its raising leg, I see that Seamus has an arrow notched back in a bow and Saulden is hesitantly shimmying closer, looking for an opening. I want to signal to them that we must back off and regroup to all attack at once if we hope to make any lasting damage, but my waving arm gets the attention of no one, not even the demon.

All of a sudden, almost in the blink of an eye, Saulden's body is beneath the demon's sword and is fading from the room. One blow! It defeated Saulden in one blow.

It is at this moment that my heart begins to move as quickly as my back-peddling feet do, fully aware that the foe has fixated on me now and is advancing with surprising speed. My eyes search for Seamus' form with the frantic desperation of a wild beast caught in an inescapable trap, but its sword breaks my line of sight and sends my heart into a thundering mess. My prayers to whatever gods are watching must have reached someone though, because my sloppy roll is enough to cheat inevitable death. Unfortunately, I was not anticipating a second swing at all, which crushes my body under a heat that could boil my blood, and probably does, when its sword roars straight down upon me. There is pain, unspeakable, heart-stopping pain as I'm fully aware of my flesh being cooked by the heat of its sword burning its way to my bones, and then there is nothing but darkness.

When I pry open my tired eyes again, a gasp leaves my lungs involuntarily and my hands begin to grope at my waist for my Estus flask. I have the flask raised to my lips before realization settles me and calms my frazzled nerves; this realization being nothing more than Saulden sitting across the bonfire at the bridge of the Iron Keep with a hand braced on his now wrinkled chin. He blinks at me with bored, disinterested, hollowed eyes, and I have no choice but to flop onto my back and groan, bringing my hands before my face to observe their own wrinkled, decaying state.

"What a terrible failure..." His words don't help at all, to say the least. The heat from the lava is still suffocating me and it's bloody annoying.

"It wasn't terrible," I disagree, exhausted down to the marrow of my bones. "It was impossible! I barely did any damage, if I did any at all. We were both taken out in one hit."

Saulden does not respond, and we both sit in silence for a while until I gather the energy to fish two Human Effigies from my satchel and toss one blindly in his direction. He scrambles for it on the ground before it can roll into the lava and I can feel his hurt, accusing gaze even with my back turned to him, but I ignore the guilt from my careless behavior to cradle the effigy in my hand and shove it against my chest. My body readily absorbs the energy it gives off, causing my skin to shift and tighten, lightening in pigment, and in only a few seconds the physical signs of hollowing are reversed from my body.

"It's your friend's fault," Saulden states, also as human now as he was when I first saw him back in Majula. I'm afraid that if I ask what he means, he will confirm my creeping suspicions about the nature of this "Company of Champions".

Seamus joins us before long, his kneeling form materializing at the bonfire and betraying his exhaustion as he falls forward onto his hands and knees. Expletives fall from his lips in rapid succession, tempting Saulden from his current train of thought, but I step into his personal space, much to his obvious dismay, and demand a more thorough explanation.

"I told you his covenant has many hindering side effects..." is the only thing I can pry from him, but it is enough to flood my mind with anger, influence me to turn to Seamus, and promptly kick his prone body into the lava.

"I cannot... believe..." I don't finish my sentence because I don't know how to. I can't believe what? That we were so unfortunate? That I failed at something once again, as I always seem to do? That I allowed Seamus to ruin everything for the hundredth time? That I am as weak as I am.

I realize that I am being irrational, that he knew as much about this covenant as I did when he joined so I am in no spot to blame him so harshly, but the heat of this place and the press of failure are making me want to tear something to shreds and his face is just about begging for something to ruin its perfectness. Seamus is all talk and spitting flames when the bonfire retrieves him for us, all getting in my face and insulting me and pushing me back, which is nothing I haven't dealt with before, but Saulden stands by quietly, painted as the most innocent, worried by-stander, and as my hand is reeling back to slap Seamus' face, it is almost as if Saulden's placid nature wills me to stop.

"It wasn't his fault entirely..." Saulden tries to interject, but as soon as the last syllable leaves his mouth, the very stone beneath our feet vibrates with a violent tremor, making even Seamus, who currently has me by the collar of my armor and is leaning me back towards the surrounding lava, pause in shock. The vibrations continue for another second and then stop suddenly, leaving us in silence. I am at least glad that we all know what it means, that no one in our party is dumbfounded by the shaking of our world and ignorant to what it entails. We all know that we are being invaded.

Seamus yanks on my collar, hauling me back up from where I had one foot almost brushing the lava, and turns from me without another word. I quickly make sure that the Blue Seal is secure on my finger because, although we have the numbers to overcome a single foe, Seamus' covenant seems incredibly unpredictable - very fitting; almost as if it was made for him - and we know not if this invader will even be at the same skill level we are at, or if they are on a level far beyond our immediate reach.

Saulden is already up the stairs and onto the bridge, and, judging from a gasp of pain, our invader is as well. Even if we are all defeated, I remind myself, a Blue Sentinel will come. Even if I am the last left alive, a Blue Sentinel will come to help me. ...Right?

My legs follow Seamus' form up the stairs as my mind races through all the horrible possibilities. We can't be dying repeatedly like this... Losing our souls over and over. The only purpose it serves is to further hollowing.

There is hardly time for me to recognize that a bolt of lightning is waiting for me at the top of the stairs, racing my way until Seamus slams his foot into the side of my knee, sending me to the ground and under the speeding projectile. I don't allow myself to cry out in pain, both to not give him the satisfaction and to not show our enemy any sign of weakness, but push myself to my feet and charge at the invader with my sword held back.

We conduct an aggressive dance with him for a short time while he evades all attacks thrown at him, even as we attempt to herd him into a corner and attack all at once. He tosses out a magic spell every now and then, but he's dedicated himself so much to defense that we are getting nowhere fast.

A heavy soul arrow slams into my arm and, this time, I am the first to fall, once again not preparing myself for the projectile until it is too late. I hear Seamus' voice yell something right before my body and conscience fade to another realm.

When the bonfire regurgitates me, anger and disappointment almost block Seamus and Saulden's voices from drifting down to my ears from up upon the bridge, but it's not hard to decipher that their quiet hissing is nothing like the scrambling noises of combat, so I stay where the bonfire spit me out onto the hot stone. It burns my hands through my thin leather gloves.

I'm so horrible. I can't believe I'm so horrible. What is wrong with me? Even if Seamus' covenant is making things difficult, even if I suspect that it conflicts terribly with the Way of the Blue and stops a Blue Sentinel from being summoned, I should be able to defend myself for more than a second. Titchy Gren even said it himself: I have little defenses, but when I bleed, I make others bleed with me. The only thing I feel weighing down my soul right now is my own blood, thick and dark with my lost humanity.

I'm going to go hollow. I know I am. I'm going to keep dying and I'm going to go hollow. I can _feel_ it! I'm already hollowing!

I thread my fingers through my short hair and pull hard, letting out a scream that is filled to the brim with all of my anger and despair and disappointment and paralyzing fear. Death frightens me! Death to the Undead is something to brush off because we come back from it so quickly, but one day my body will kiss the earth and will never rise to see it again. Oh my god.

Deep through the muck of emotions, I know that I am once again overwhelmed, so easily, easily overwhelmed, you small, scared little girl, and overreacting from distress, but oh my god.

Something pulls one of my hands from my head, yanking at my hairs in the process and I kick back like a wild thing, grabbing the object and scratching and clawing. It seizes my other hand, forcing me to lean back into something solid and hard, and I do so gratefully, taking a moment to gather my breath.

I tilt my head towards the ceiling and look into Seamus' face from down on the ground where I am kneeling and leaning back onto his legs. When he bends over, the end of the cloth of Gregory's son falls over his shoulder and onto my cheek, tickling my skin and making a smile blossom on my lips.

"Don't do this again." Seamus' lips form words that I barely hear through the blood rushing around in my skull. He repeats himself as I jerk my head to the side to move his cloth away from my face, rubbing the crown of my head against his thighs.

How did I meet this man? This terrible, heartless, dreadful man. How did I even get here? What am I doing? My heart is pounding and Seamus is bending down closer from behind me to look into my eyes and my hands are curling around his like he will ground me and carry me away from the fate we both know is going to take us one day. Liquid from my eye tickles my cheek like his cloth did.

I open my mouth to tell him that I'm okay, that I'm not hollow, like he thought that one time we were in the Cardinal Tower together right after I panicked at the fog wall and he slapped my back to calm me down, but it only sent me into a deeper panic that lasted even after I awoke at the bonfire and started laughing hysterically at myself. He had his hand on my chest when I woke up, I remember, and I never got to ask him why he did that.

"I'm okay..." It comes out as less of an assurance and more of a sob, but my throat is too hot and painful to make it come out any other way.

He searches both my eyes with the one he chooses to have left, and it makes me feel vulnerable. "Don't look like you're okay," he says in a hushed voice. I feel so incredibly vulnerable. Ever since I joined this damn covenant.

"I'm okay," I tell him again, pulling my hands from his and leaning forward, attempting to establish my own ground for myself. "I'm okay."

He is silent while I wipe at my face and breathe in deeply, and I just know that he has that vaguely disgusted, disturbed look on his face that he always has whenever he is puzzled or disconcerted.

"I'm okay," I whisper again, before taking a deep breath and expelling the air slowly. "Goodness..."

"You're crazy," he declares, and when I turn my head to look up at him, sure enough, there is the disgusted look. "I hope I'm far away when you do go hollow, 'cause if this is you bein' 'okay' then... goddamn when you go hollow."

I push myself to my feet and stretch my arms above my head for no other reason than to give myself something to do so that my mind does not continue to tangle itself around the concept of hollowing and become entrenched forever.

"I was just upset," I tell the both of us, though it doesn't do anything to dislodge that look he has about him. "I was upset."

"Yeah," he says, and then shakes his head. His cloth follows his movements a bit. "You're crazy."

"I'm not!" I insist. I'm raising my voice again, I realize. Stop getting so upset, you silly, stupid girl.

"No, I mean... You're weird."

I stare at him with a straight-faced expression that I hope conveys how ridiculous I think he is.

"No. Just. You're so quiet and reserved all the time. Really level-headed and kinda emotionless. When you do feel strong emotions, it comes out in crazy, intense bursts like this. It's weird. You're so composed you have sudden attacks like this, like your body needs to get out emotions or somethin'. I don't know. It's weird as hell."

His gaze is at something behind me and off to the right, probably at the shifting, ever flowing lava that's licking at the stone we're standing on. I gaze into the lava behind him as well.

"You're the same," I inform him. "You're the opposite. You're loud and expressive most of the time, so when you feel something strongly, you get very quiet." When I look at his face, his dark eye flicks up to look at mine. "I noticed it in Majula."

He doesn't say anything in response.

"Where is Saulden?" I ask, turning around to look behind me up the stairs, because it only just now dawned on me that he's not present, which gives me great concern. I only just heard him up on the bridge whispering with Seamus before I had my silly outburst. There must have been a snag in time somewhere that disconnected us after I died, in which they defeated the invader and had time to start a quiet argument about something. There might have been another, unexpected snag that carried Saulden away from us.

Seamus remains silent.

Before I can confront him, in impeccable timing, the bonfire begins to glow brilliantly at our feet, drawing both of our attention to it, and the shape of a man turns from mist to flesh. Saulden rises, as fully human as he was when he used the effigy I gave him and with a small smile on his lips. In his left hand is a Homeward Bone and in his right, he cups a large, white glow that flows around his fingertips with raw energy. When he extends his arm and holds it out for me to grasp, his normally drooping, hopeless eyes capture mine and scream of pride in one's abilities and hope for one's future.

"I'd forgotten what comfort a little companionship can bring," he remarks thoughtfully.

He did it. He did what all three of us could not do. Seamus was with me, I realize. Saulden realized this as well, the devilishly wise man, and seized the opportunity to challenge the demon on a more even and fair field, completely unaffected by the conditions of the Company of Champions, held by Seamus, who remained with me the entire time.

I do not take the soul of the fire demon from him. I curl my hand over his fingers so he encloses the soul in his own palm.


End file.
